K 5255 

.A1 

1902 







Class. 



Book 



PRESENTED Wi^ 




JOHN RUSKIN, 



THE 

k 

fcROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

ON 

WORK, TRAFFIC, WAR. 



BY 

JOHN RUSKIN, M.A. 



# 



\And indeed it should have been of gold, had not Jupiter been 
so poor. — Aristophanes. 



\ NEW YORK: 

''^\ BAY VIEW PUBLISHING CO. 



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''^ CONTENTS. 



Lecture I. 

PAGB 

WORK 31 



Lecture II. 
TRAFFIC , 93 

Lecture III. 
WAR 145 



PREFACE. 



"TWENTY years ago there was no loveliei 
piece of lowland scenery in South 
England, nor any more pathetic in the 
world, by its expression of sweet human 
character and life, than that immediately 
bordering on the sources of the Wandle, 
and including the lower moors of Adding- 
ton, and the villages of Beddington and 
Carshalton, with all their pools and streams. 
No clearer or diviner waters ever sang with 
constant lips of the hand which "givetli 
rain from heaven ;" no pastures ever light- 
ened in spring-time with more passionate 
blossoming ; no sweeter homes ever hal- 
lowed the heart of the passer-by with their 
pride of peaceful gladness — fain-hidden — 
yet full-confessed. The place remains, or, 
until a few months ago, remained nearly 
5 



Preface. 

unchanged in its larger features ; but, with 
deliberate mind, I say that I have never 
seen anything so ghastly in its inner tragic 
meaning, — not in Pisan Maremma, — not 
by Campagna tomb, — not by the sand-isles 
of the Torcellan shore, — as the slow steal- 
ing of aspects of reckless, indolent, animal 
neglect, over the delicate sweetness of that 
English scene ; nor is any blasphemy or 
impiety — any frantic saying or godless 
thought — more appalling to me, using the 
best power of judgment I have to discern 
its sense and scope, than the insolent de- 
filings of those springs by the human herds 
that drink of them. Just where the welling 
of stainless water, trembling and pure, like 
a body of light, enters the pool of Carshal- 
ton, cutting itself a radiant channel down 
to the gravel, through warp of feathery 
weeds, all waving, which it traverses with 
its deep threads of clearness, like the chal- 
cedony in moss-agate, starred here and 
there with white grenouillette ; just in the 
very rush and murmur of the first spread- 
6 



Preface. 

ing currents, the human wretches of the 
place cast their street and house fouhiess ; 
heaps of dust and sHme, and broken shreds 
of old metal, and rags of putrid clothes ; 
they having neither energy to cart it away, 
nor decency enough to dig it into the 
ground, thus shed into the stream, to diffuse 
what venom of it will float and melt, far 
away, in all places where God meant those 
waters to bring joy and health. And, in a 
little pool, behind some houses farther in 
the village, where another spring rises, the 
shattered stones of the well, and of the 
little fretted channel which was long ago 
built and traced for it by gentler hands, lie 
scattered, each from each, under a ragged 
bank of mortar and scoria ; and brick- 
layers' refuse on one side, which the clean 
water nevertheless chastises to purity ; but 
it cannot conquer the dead earth beyond ; 
and there, circled and coiled under fester- 
ing scum, the stagnant edge of the pool 
effaces itself into a slope of black slime, 
the accumulation of indolent years. Half 



Preface. 

a dozen men, with one day's work, could 
cleanse those pools, and trim the flowers 
about their banks, and make every breatli 
of summer air above them rich with cool 
balm ; and every glittering wave Tnedicinal, 
as if it ran, troubled of angels, from the 
porch of Bethesda. But that day's work 
is never given, nor will be : nor will 
any joy be possible to heart of man for 
evermore about those wells of English 
waters. 

When I last left them, I walked uj) 
slowly through the back streets of Croy- 
don, from the old church to the hospital ; 
and just to the left, before coming up to the 
crossing of the High Street, there was a 
new public-house built. And the front of 
it was built in so wise manner, that a recess 
of two feet was left below its front win- 
dows, between them and the street pave- 
ment — a recess too narrow for any possible 
use (for even if it had been occupied by a 
seat, as in old time it might have been, 
everybody walking along the street would 
8 



Preface. 

have fallen over the legs of the reposing 
wayfarers). But, by way of making- this 
two feet depth of freehold land more ex- 
pressive of the dignity of an establishment 
for the sale of spirituous liquors, it was 
fenced from the pavement by an imposing 
iron railing, having four or five spearheads 
to the yard of it, and six feet high; con- 
taining as much iron and iron-work, in- 
deed, as could well be put into the space ; 
and by this stately arrangement the little 
piece of dead ground within, between wall 
and street, became a protective receptacle 
of refuse; cigar-ends and oyster-shells, and 
the like, such as an open-handed English 
street populace habitually scatters from its 
presence, and was thus left unsweepable 
by any ordinary methods. Now the iron 
bars which, uselessly (or in great degree 
worse than uselessly), enclosed this bit of 
ground, and made it pestilent, represented 
a quantity of work which would have 
cleansed the Carshalton pools three times 
over — of work, partly cramped and deadly^ 
9 



Preface. 

in the mine ; partly fierce* and exhaustive, 
at the furnace ; partly foolish and seden- 
tary, of ill-taught students making bad 

* " A fearful occurrence took place a few days since 
near Wolverhampton. Thomas Snape, aged nineteen, 
was on duty as the ' keeper ' of a blast furnace at 
Deepfield, assisted by John Gardner, aged eighteen, 
and Joseph Swift, aged thirty-seven. The furnace 
contained four tons of molten iron and an equal 
amount of cinders, and ought to have been run out 
at 7.30 p. M. But Snape and his mates, engaged in 
talking and drinking, neglected their duty, and in 
the meantime the iron rose in the furnace until it 
reached a pipe wherein water was contained. Just 
as the men had stripped, and were proceeding to tap 
the furnace, the water in the pipe, converted into 
steam, burst down its front and let loose on them 
the molten metal, which instantaneoush' consumed 
Gardner; Snape, terribly burnt and mad with pain, 
leaped into the canal, and then ran home and fell 
dead on the threshold; Swift sur^nved to reach the 
hospital, where he died too." 

In further illustration of this matter. I beg the 
reader to look at the article on the " Decay of the 
English Race," in MiePall Mall Gazette of April 17, 
of this year ; and at the articles on the " Report of 
the Thames Commission," in any journals of the 
same date. 

10 



Preface. 

designs ; work from the beginning to the 
last fruits of it, and in all the branches of it, 
venomous, deathful and miserable. Now, 
how did it come to pass that this work was 
done instead of the other; that the strength 
and life of the English operative were 
spent in defiling ground, instead of re- 
deeming it, and in producing an entirely 
(in that place) valueless piece of metal, 
which can neither be eaten nor breathed, 
instead of medicinal fresh air and pure 
water ? 

There is but one reason for it, and at 
present a conclusive one — that the capi- 
talist can charge per-centage on the work 
in the one case, and cannot in the other. 
If, having certain funds for supporting 
labor at my disposal, I pay men merely to 
keep my ground in order, my money is in 
that function spent once for all ; but if I 
pay them to dig iron , out of my ground, 
and work it and sell it, I can charge rent 
for the ground, and per-centage both on the 
manufacture and the sale, and make my 



Preface. 

capital profitable in these three by-ways. 
The greater part of the profitable invest- 
ment of capital in the present day is in the 
operations of this kind, in which the public 
is jDcrsuaded to buy something of no use to 
it, on production or sale of which the capi- 
talist may charge j^er-centage ; the said 
public remaining all the while under the 
persuasion that the per-centages thus ob- 
tained are real national gains, whereas they 
are merely filchings out of partially light 
pockets to swell heavy ones. 

Thus the Croydon publican buys the 
iron railing to make himself more conspic- 
uous to drunkards. The public-house- 
keeper on the other side of the way pres- 
ently buys another railing, to out-rail him 
with. Both are, as to their relative at- 
tractiveness to customers of taste, just 
where they were before; but they have lost 
the price of the railings, which they must 
either themselves finally lose, or make 
their aforesaid customers of taste pay by 
raising the price of their beer, or adultera- 



Preface. 

ting it. Either the publicans or their cus- 
tomers are thus poorer by precisely what 
the capitalist lias gained, and the value of 
the work itself, meantime, has been lost to 
the nation ; the iron bars in that form and 
place being wholly useless. It is this mode 
of taxation of the poor by the rich which 
is referred to in the text (page 75), in com- 
paring the modern acquisitive power of 
capital with that of the lance and sword, 
the only difference being that the levy of 
blackmail in old times was by force, and 
is now by cozening. The old rider and 
reiver frankly quartered himself on the 
publican for the night; the modern one 
merely makes his lance into an iron spike, 
and persuades his host to buy it. One 
comes as an open robber, the other as a 
cheating peddler, but the result to the 
injured person's pocket is absolutely the 
same. Of course many useful industries 
mingle with and disguise the useless ones ; 
and in the habits of energy aroused by the 
struggle there is a certain direct good. It 
13 



Preface. 

is far better to spend four thousand pounds 
in making a good gun, and then to blow it 
to pieces, than to pass life in idleness. Only 
do not let it be called " political economy." 
There is also a confused notion in the 
minds of many persons that the gatheiing 
of the property of the poor into the hands 
of the rich does no ultimate harm, since, in 
whosesoever hands it may be, it must be 
spent at last, and thus, they think, return 
to the poor again. This fallacy has been 
again and again exposed; but grant the 
plea true, and the same apology may, of 
course, be made for blackmail, or an}- other 
form of robbery. It might be (though 
practically it never is) as advantageous for 
the nation that the robber should have the 
spending of the money he extorts as that 
the person robbed should have spent it. 
But this is no excuse for the theft. If I 
were to put a turnpike on the road where 
it passes my own gate and endeavor to 
exact a shilling from every passenger, the 
public would soon do away with my gate, 
14 



Preface. 

without listening to any plea on my part 
that " it was as advantageous to them in 
the end that I should spend their shillings 
as that they themselves should," But if, 
instead of outfacing them with a turnpike, 
I can only persuade them to come in and 
buy stones, or old iron, or any other useless 
thing, out of my ground, I may rob them 
to the same extent, and be, moreover, 
thanked as a public benefactor and pro- 
moter of commercial prosperity. And this 
main question for the poor of England — 
for the poor of all countries — is wholly 
omitted in every common treatise on the 
subject of wealth. Even by the laborers 
themselves the operation of capital is re- 
garded only in its effect on their immediate 
interests, never in the far more terrific 
power of its appointment of the kind and 
the object of labor. It matters little ulti- 
mately how much a laborer is paid for 
making anything ; but it matters fearfully 
what the thing is which he is compelled to 
make. If his labor is so ordered as to pro- 
15 



Preface. 



duce food and fresh air and fresh water, no 
matter that his wages are low — the food 
and fresh air and water will be at last 
there, and he will at last get them . Bnt 
if he is paid to destroy food and fresh air, 
or to prodnce iron bars instead of them — 
the food and air will finally not be there, 
and he will not get them, to his great and 
final inconvenience. So that, conclusively, 
in political as in household economy, the 
great question is not so much what money 
you have in your pocket, as what you will 
buy with it and do with it. 

I have been long accustomed, as all men 
engaged in work of investigation must be, 
to hear my statements laughed at for years 
before they are examined or believed, and 
I am generally content to wait the public's 
time. But it has not been without dis- 
pleased surprise that I have found myself 
totally unable as yet, by any repetition or 
illustration, to force this plain thought into 
my readers' heads — that the wealth of na- 
tions, as of men, consists in substance, not 
i6 



Preface. 

in ciphers, and that the real good of all 
work and of all commerce depends on the 
final worth of the thing you make or get 
by it. This is a practical enough state- 
ment, one would think; but the English 
public has been so possessed by its modern 
school of economists with the notion that 
Business is always good, whether it be busy 
in mischief or in benefit; and that buying 
and selling are always salutary, whatever 
the intrinsic worth of what you buy or 
sell — that it seems impossible to gain so 
much as a patient hearing for any inquiry 
respecting the substantial result of our 
eager modern labors. I have never felt 
more checked by the sense of this impos- 
sibility than in arranging the heads of the 
following three lectures, which, though 
delivered at considerable intervals of time 
and in different places, were not prepared 
without reference to each other. Their 
connection would, however, have been 
made far more distinct if I had not been 
prevented, by what I feel to be another 



Preface. 

great difficulty in addressing English audi^ 
ences, from enforcing with any decision 
the common, and to me the most impor- 
tant, part of their subjects. I chiefly de- 
sired (as I have just said) to question my 
hearers — operatives, merchants, and sol- 
diers — as to the ultimate meaning of the 
business they had in hand, and to know 
from them what they expected or intended 
their manufacture to come to, their selling 
to come to, and their killing to come to. 
That appeared the first point needing de- 
termination before I could speak to them 
with any real utility or effect. "You 
craftsmen, salesmen, swordsmen, do but 
tell me clearly what you want ; then if I 
can say anything to help you I will, and 
if not, I will account to you as I best may 
for my inability." But in order to put 
this question into any terms, one had first 
of all to face the difficulty just spoken of — 
to me for the present insuperable — the 
difficulty of knowing whether to address 
one's audience as believing or not belie v- 
i8 



Preface. 

ing in any other world than this. For if 
you address any average modern English 
company as believing in an eternal life, 
and endeavor to draw any conclusions from 
this assumed belief as to their present 
business, they will forthwith tell you that 
what you say is very beautiful, but it is 
not practical. If, on the contrary, you 
frankly address them as unbelievers in 
eternal life, and try to draw any conse- 
quences from that unbelief, they imme- 
diately hold you for an accursed person, 
and shake off the dust from their feet at 
you. And the more I thought over what I 
had got to say, the less I found I could say 
it, without some reference to this intangi- 
ble or intractable part of the subject. It 
made all the difference, in asserting any 
principle of war, whether one assumed that 
a discharge of artillery would merely knead 
down a certain quantity of red clay into a 
level line, as in a brick field ; or whether, 
out of every separately Christian-named 
portion of the ruinous heap, there went out 
19 



Preface. 

into the smoke and dead-fallen air of 
battle some astonished condition of soul, 
unwillingly released. It made all the dif- 
ference, in speaking of the possible range 
of commerce, whether one assumed that 
all bargains related only to \'isible prop- 
erty, or whether property, for the present 
invisible, but nevertheless real, was else- 
where purchasable on other terms. It 
made all the difference, in addressing a body 
of men subject to considerable hardship, 
and having to find some way out of it, 
whether one could confidently say to them, 
^'My friends, you have only to die and all 
will be right ; " or whether one had any 
secret miso:ivino: that such advice was more 
blessed to him that gave than to him that 
took it. And therefore the deliberate 
reader will find throughout these lectures 
a hesitation in driving points home, and a 
pausing vShort of conclusions which he will 
feel I would fain have come to — hesitation 
which arises wholly from this uncertaintv 
of my hearers' temper. For I do not now 



Preface. 

Speak, nor have I ever spoken, since the 
time of first forward youth, in any prose- 
lyting temper, as desiring to persuade any 
one of what in such matters I thouo;ht 
myself; but, whomsoever I venture to ad- 
dress, I take for the time his creed as I find 
it, and endeavor to push it into such vital 
fruit as it seems capable of. Thus it is a 
creed with a great part of the existing 
English people that they are in possession 
of a book which tells them, straight from 
the lips of God, all they ought to do and 
need to know. I have read that book with 
as much care as most of them for some 
forty years, and am thankful that, on those 
who trust it, I can press its pleadings. My 
endeavor has been uniformly to make them 
trust it more deeply than they do; trust it, 
not in their own favorite verses only, but 
in the sum of all ; trust it not as a fetish 
or talisman, which they are to be saved by 
daily repetitions of, but as a Captain's 
order, to be heard and obeyed at their 
peril. I was always encouraged by sup- 



Preface. 

posing my hearers to hold such belief. To 
these, if to any, I once had hope of ad- 
dressing, with acceptance, words which 
insisted on the guilt of pride and the 
futility of avarice; from these, if from any, 
I once expected ratification of a political 
economy, which asserted that the life was 
more than the meat, and the body than 
raiment; and these, it once seemed to me, 
I might ask, without accusation of fanati- 
cism, not merely in doctrine of the lips, 
but in the bestowal of their heart's treas- 
ure, to separate themselves from the crowd 
of whom it is written, "After all these 
thincrs do the Gentiles seek." 

It cannot, however, be assumed, with 
any semblance of reason, that a general 
audience is now wholly, or even in major- 
ity, composed of these religious persons. 
A large portion must always consist of men 
who admit no such creed, or who at least 
are inaccessible to appeals founded on it. 
And as with the so-called Christian I de- 
sired to plead for honest declaration and 



Preface. 

fulfillment of his belief in life, with the 
so-called infidel, I desired to plead for an 
honest declaration and fulfillment of his 
belief in death. The dilemma is inevi- 
table. Men must either hereafter live or 
hereafter die ; fate may be bravely met and 
conduct wisely ordered on either expecta- 
tion, but never in hesitation between un- 
grasped hope and unconfronted fear. We 
usually believe in immortality, so far as to 
avoid preparation for death ; and in mor- 
tality, so far as to avoid preparation for any- 
thing after death. Whereas a wise man 
will at least hold himself prepared for one 
or other of two events, of which one or 
other is inevitable, and will have all things 
in order for his sleep or in readiness for his 
awakening. 

Nor have we any right to call it an 
ignoble judgment if he determine to put 
them in order, as for sleep. A brave belief 
in life is indeed an enviable state of mind, 
but, as far as I can discern, an unusual 
one. I know few Christians so convinced 
23 



Preface. 

of the splendor of the rooms in their 
Father's house as to be happier when their 
friends are called to those mansions, than 
they would have been if the Queen had 
sent for them to live at court; nor has the 
Church's most ardent "desire to depart 
and be with Christ," ever cured it of the 
singular habit of putting on mourning for 
ever}' person summoned to such departure. 
On the contrary, a brave belief in death 
has been assuredly held by many not igno- 
ble persons, and it is a sign of the last 
depravity in the Church itself, when it as- 
sumes that such a belief is inconsistent 
with either purity of character or energy 
of hand. The shortness of life is not to 
any rational person a conclusive reason for 
wasting the space of it which may be 
granted him ; nor does the anticipation of 
death to-morrow suggest to any one but a 
drunkard the expediency of drunkenness 
to-day. To teach that there is no device 
in the grave may indeed make the device- 
less person more contented in his dullness ; 

24 



Preface. 

but it will make the deviser only more 
earnest in devising ; nor is human conduct 
likely in every case to be purer under the 
conviction that all its evil may in a moment 
be pardoned, and all its wrong-doing in a 
moment redeemed, and that the sigh of 
repentance, which purges the guilt of the 
past, will waft the soul into a felicity 
which forgets its pain, than it may be un- 
der the sterner, and to many not unwise 
minds, more probable apprehension, that 
"what a man soweth that shall he also 
reap," — or others reap, — when he, the 
living seed of pestilence, walketh no more 
in darkness, but lies down therein. 

But to men whose feebleness of sight, or 
bitterness of soul, or the offence given b}^ 
the conduct of those who claim higher 
hope, may have rendered this painful creed 
the only possible one, there is an appeal to 
be made, more secure in its ground than 
any which can be addressed to happier 
persons. I would fain, if I might offence- 
lessly, have spoken to them as if none 

25 



Preface. 

others heard, and have said thus : Hear 
me, you dying men, who will soon be deaf 
forever. For these others, at vour ri^^ht 
hand and your left, who look forward to a 
state of infinite existence, in which all 
their errors will be overruled and all their 
faults forgiven ; for these who, stained and 
blackened in the battle-smoke of mortality, 
have but to dip themselves for an instant 
in the font of death, and to rise renewed of 
plumage, as a dove that is covered with sil- 
ver and her feathers like gold ; for these, 
indeed, it may be permissible to waste their 
numbered moments, through faith in a 
future of innumerable hours ; to these, in 
their weakness, it may be conceded that 
they should tamper with sin which can 
only bring forth fruit of righteousness, and 
profit b)^ the iniquity which one day will be 
remembered no more. In them it may be 
no sign of hardness of heart to neglect the 
poor, over whom they know their Master 
is watching, and to leave those to perish 
temporarily who cannot perish eternally. 
26 



Preface. 

But for you there is no such hope, and 
therefore no such excuse. This fate, which 
you ordain for the wretched, you believe to 
be all their inheritance ; you may crush 
them, before the moth, and they will never 
rise to rebuke you ; their breath, which 
fails for lack of food, once expiring, will 
never be recalled to whisper against you a 
word of accusing ; they and you, as you 
think, shall lie down together in the dust, 
and the worms cover you, and for them 
there shall be no consolation, and on you 
no vengeance — only the question mur- 
mured above your grave : "Who shall 
repay him what he hath done?" Is it 
therefore easier for you in your heart to 
inflict the sorrow for which there is no 
remedy ? Will you take wantonly this 
little all of his life from your poor brother, 
and make his brief hours long to him with 
pain ? Will you be readier to the injustice 
which can never be redressed, and nig- 
gardly of mercy which you can bestow 
but once, and which, refusing, you refuse 
27 



Preface. 

forever? I think better of you, even of 
the most selfish, than that you would do 
this, well understood. And for yourselves, 
it seems to me, the question becomes not 
less grave in these curt limits. If your life 
were but a fever fit, — the madness of a 
night, whose follies were all to be forgotten 
in the dawn, it might matter little how 
you fretted away the sickly hours, — what 
toys you snatched at or let fall, what 
visions you followed wistfully with the 
deceived eyes of sleepless frenzy. Is the 
earth only an hospital ? Play, if you care 
to play, on the floor of the hospital dens. 
Knit its straw into what crowns please 
you ; gather the dust of it for treasure, and 
die rich in that, clutching at the black 
motes in the air with your dying hands, 
and yet it may be well with you. But if 
this life be no dream and the world no 
hospital, — if all the peace and power and 
joy you can ever win must be won now, 
and all fruit of victory gathered here or 
never — will you still, throughout the puny 
28 



Preface. 

totality of your life, weary yourselves in 
the fire for vanity? If there is no rest 
which reniaineth for you, is there none 
you might presently take ? Was this grass 
of the earth made green for your shroud 
only, not for your bed? And can you 
never lie down icpon it, but only under it ? 
The heathen, to whose creed you have re- 
turned, thought not so. They knew that 
life brought its contest; but they expected 
from it also the crown of all contest : No 
proud one ! no jewelled circlet flaming 
through Heaven above the height of the 
unmerited throne ; only some few leaves of 
wild olive, cool to the tired brow, through 
a few years of peace. It should have been 
of gold, they thought ; but Jupiter was 
poor ; this was the best the god could give 
them. Seeking a greater than this, they 
had known it a mockery. Not in war, not 
in wealth, not in tyrann}-, was there any 
happiness to be found for them — only in 
kindly peace, fruitful and free. The wreath 
was to be of ivild olive, mark you, — the 
29 



Preface. 



tree that grows carelessly, tufting the rocks 
with no vivid bloom, no verdure of branch, 
— only with soft snow of blossom, and 
scarcely fulfilled fruit, mixed with grey 
leaf and thorn-set stem; no fastening of 
diadem for }ou but with such sharp em- 
broidery ! But this, such as it is, you may 
win while yet you live; type of grey honor 
and sweet rest.* Free-heartedness, and 
graciousness, and undisturbed trust, and 
requited love, and the sight of the peace 
of others, and the ministry to their pain — 
these and the blue sky above you, and the 
sweet waters and flowers of the earth be- 
neath, and mysteries and presences, innu- 
merable, of living things — these may yet 
be here your riches, untormenting and 
divine : serviceable for the life tliat now 
is; nor, it may be, without promise of that 
which is to come. 



30 



LECTURE L 



WORK. 



33- 



LECTURE I. 

WORK. 

(Delivered before the Working Men's Institute, at 
Camberwell.) 

1\TY friends : I have not come among 
you to-night to endeavor to give you 
an entertaining lecture, but to tell you a 
few plain facts, and ask you some plain but 
necessary questions. I have seen and 
known too much of the struggle for life 
among our laboring population to feel at 
ease, even under any circumstances, in 
inviting them to dwell on the trivialities 
of my own studies; but, much more, as I 
meet to-night, for the first time, the mem- 
bers of a working Institute established in 
the district in which I have passed the 
greater part of my life, I am desirous that 
we vshould at once understand each other 
on graver matters. I would fain tell you 

3 33 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 



with what feelings and with what hope I 
regard this Institution, as one of many 
such now happily established throughout 
England, as well as in other countries — 
Institutions which are preparing the way 
for a great change in all the circumstance^ 
of industrial life, but of which the success 
must wholly depend upon our clearly un- 
derstanding the circumstances and neces- 
sary limits of this change. No teacher 
can truly promote the cause of education 
until he knows the conditions of the life 
for which that education is to prepare his 
pupil. And the fact that he is called upon 
to address you nominally as a "Working 
Class," must compel him, if he is in any 
wise earnest or thoughtful, to inquire in 
the outset on ^vhat you yourselves suppose 
this class distinction has been founded in 
the past, and must be founded in the 
future. The manner of the amusement 
and the matter of the teaching which any 
of us can offer you must depend wholly on 
our first luiderstanding from you whether 



Work. 

yon think the distinction heretofore drawn 
between working men and others is trnly 
or falsely founded. Do you accept it as it 
stands ? Do you wish it to be modified, or 
do you think the object of education is to 
efface it, and make us forget it forever ? 

Let me make myself more distinctly 
understood. We call this — you and I — a 
"Working Men's" Institute, and our col- 
lege in London a "Working Men's" Col- 
lege. Now, how do you consider that 
these several institutes differ, or ought to 
differ, from "idle men's" institutes and 
' ' idle men's " colleges ? Or by what other 
word than "idle" shall I distinguish those 
whom the happiest and wisest of working 
men do not object to call the ' ' Upper 
Classes ?' ' Are there really upper classes, 
are there lower ? How much should they 
always be elevated, how much always de- 
pressed? And, gentlemen and ladies, I 
pray those of you who are here to forgive 
me the offence there may be in what I am 
going to say. It is not / who wish to say 
35 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

it. Bitter voices say it ; voices of battle 
and of famine through all the world, which 
must be heard some day, whoever keeps 
silence. Neither is it to you specially that 
I say it. I am sure that most now present 
know their duties of kindness, and fulfill 
them, better perhaps than I do mine. But 
I speak to you as representing your whole 
class, which errs, I know, chiefly by 
thoughtlessness, but not therefore the less 
terribly. Wilful error is limited by the 
will; but what limit is there to that of 
which we are unconscious? 

Bear with me, therefore, while I turn to 
these workmen and ask them, also as rep- 
resenting a great multitude, what they 
think the " upper classes " are, and ought 
to be, in relation to them. Answer, you 
workmen who are here, as you would 
among yourselves, frankly, and tell me 
how you would have me call those classes. 
Am I to call them — would yoit think me 
right in calling them — the idle classes? I 
think you would feel somewhat uneasy, 
36 



Work. 

and as if I were not treating my subject 
honestly or speaking from my heart, if I 
went on under the supposition that all rich 
jDcople were idle. You would be both 
unjust and unwise if you allowed me to 
say that — not less unjust than the rich 
people who say that all the poor are idle, 
and will never work if they can help it, or 
more than they can help. 

For, indeed, the fact is, that there are 
idle poor and idle rich, and there are busy 
poor and busy rich. Many a beggar is as 
lazy as if he had ten thousand a year, and 
many a man of large fortune is busier than 
his errand-boy, and never would think of 
stopping in the street to play marbles. So 
that, in a large view, the distinction be- 
tween workers and idlers, as between 
knaves and honest men, runs through the 
very heart and innermost economies of 
men of all ranks and in all positions. 
There is a working class — strong and 
happy — among both rich and poor ; there 
is an idle class — weak, wicked, and mis- 

31 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 



erable — among both rich and poor. And 
the worst of the misunderstandings arising 
between the two orders come of the unlucky 
fact that the wise of one class habituall)^ 
contemplate the foolish of the other. If 
the busy rich people watched and rebuked 
the idle rich people, all would be right ; 
and if the busy poor people watched and 
rebuked the idle poor people, all would be 
riiiht. But each class has a tendency to 
look for the faults of the other. A hard- 
working man of property is particularly 
offended by an idle beggar, and an orderly 
but poor workman is naturally intolerant 
of the licentious luxury of the rich. And 
what is severe judgment in the minds of 
the just men of either class, becomes fierce 
enmity in the unjust; but among the un- 
just only. None but the dissolute among 
the poor look upon the rich as their natu- 
ral enemies, or desire to pillage their houses 
and divide their property . None but the dis- 
solute among the rich speak in opprobrious 
terms of the vices and follies of the poor. 
38 



Work. 

There is, then, no class distinction be- 
tween idle and industrious people ; and I 
am going to-night to speak only of the 
industrious. The idle people we will put 
out of our tlioughts at once — they are mere 
nuisances — what ought to be done with 
tJiem^ we'll talk of at another time. But 
there are class distinctions among the in- 
dustrious themselves — tremendous distinc- 
tions — which rise and fall to every degree 
in the infinite thermometer of human pain 
and of human power — distinctions of high 
and low, of lost and won, to the whole 
reach of man's soul and body. 

These separations we will study, and the 
laws of them, among energetic men only, 
who, whether they work or whether they 
play, put their strength into the work and 
their strength into the game ; being in the 
full sense of the word "industrious," one 
way or another, with a purpose or without. 
And these distinctions are mainly four : 

I. Between those who work and those 
who play. 

39 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

II. Between those who produce the 
means of life and those who consume 
them. 

III. Between those who work with the 
head and those who work with the hand. 

IV. Between those who work wisely and 
those who work foolishly. 

For easier memory, let us say we are 
going to oppose in our examination — 

I. Work to play ; 

II. Production to consumption ; 

III. Head to hand ; and, 

IV. Sense to nonsense. 

I. First, then, of the distinction between 
the classes who work and the classes who 
play. Of course we must agree upon a 
definition of these terms — work and play, 
before going farther. Now, roughly, not 
with vain subtlety of definition, but for 
plain use of the words, "play" is an exer- 
tion of body or mind, made to please our- 
selves, and with no determined end ; and 
work is a thing done because it ought to 
40 



Work. 

be done, and with a determined end. You 
play, as you call it, at cricket, for instance. 
That is as hard work as anything else, but 
it amuses you, and it has no result but the 
amusement. If it were done as an ordered 
form of exercise, for health's sake, it would 
become work directly. So, in like manner, 
whatever we do to please ourselves, and 
only for the sake of the pleasure, not for 
an ultimate object, is "play," the "pleas- 
ing thing," not the useful thing. Play 
may be useful in a secondary sense (nothing 
is indeed more useful or necessary) ; but 
the use of it depends on its being spon- 
taneous. 

Let us, then, inquire together what sort 
of games the playing class in England 
spend their lives in playing at. 

The first of all English games is making- 
money. That is an all-absorbing game ; 
and we knock each other down oftener in 
playing at that than at foot-ball, or any 
other roughest sport ; and it is absolutel}^ 
without purpose ; no one who engages 
41 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

heartily in that game ever knows why. 
Ask a great money-maker what he wants 
to do with his money — he never knows. 
He doesn't make it to do anything with it. 
He gets it only that he 7}iay get it. "What 
will you make of what you have got ?" you 
ask. "Well, I'll get more," he says, just 
as at cricket you get more runs. There's 
no use in the runs, but to get more of them 
than other people is the game. And there's 
no use in the money, but to have more of 
it than other people is the game. So all 
that great, foul city of London there, — 
rattling, growling, smoking, stinking, — a 
ghastly heap of fermenting brickwork, 
pouring out poison at every pore, — you 
fancy it is a city of work? Not a street of 
it ! It is a great city of play ; very nasty 
play, and very hard play, but still play. It 
is only Lord's cricket-ground without the 
turf, — a huge billiard-table without the 
cloth, and with pockets as deep as the bot- 
tomless pit, but mainly a billiard-table, 
after all. 

42 



Work. 

Well, the first great English game is 
this playing at counters. It differs from 
the rest in that it appears always to be 
producing money, while every other game 
is expensive. But it does not always pro- 
duce money. There's a great difference 
between "winning" money and ''making" 
it ; a great difference between getting it out 
of another man's pocket into ours, or fill- 
ing both. Collecting money is by no 
means the same thing as making it ; the 
tax-gatherer's house is not the Mint, and 
much of the apparent gain (so-called) in 
commerce is only a form of taxation on 
carriage or exchange. 

Our next great English game, however, 
hunting and shooting, is costly altogether ; 
and how much we are fined for it annually 
in land, horses, gamekeepers and game 
laws, and all else that accompanies that 
beautiful and special English game, I will 
not endeavor to count now, but note only 
that, except for exercise, this is not merely 
a useless game, but a deadly one, to all 
43 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

couuected with it. For through horse- 
racing you get every form of what the 
higher classes everywhere call "Play," in 
distinction from all other plays ; that is — 
gambling, by no means a beneficial or re- 
creative game ; and, through game-pre- 
serving, you get also some curious laying- 
out of ground ; that beautiful arrangement 
of dwelling-house for man and beast, by 
which we have grouse and blackcock — so 
many brace to the acre, and men and 
women — so many brace to the garret. I 
often wonder what the angelic builders and 
surveyors — the angelic builders who build 
the "many mansions" up above there; 
and the angelic surveyors, who measured 
that four-square city with their measuring 
reeds — I wonder what they think, or are 
supposed to think, of the laying out of 
ground by this nation, which has set itself, 
as it seems, literally to accomplish, word 
for word, or rather fact for word, in the 
persons of those poor whom its Master left 
to represent Him, what that Master said of 

44 



Work. 

Himself — that foxes and birds had homes, 
but He none. 

Then, next to the gentlemen's game of 
hunting, we must put the ladies' game of 
dressing. It is not the cheapest of games. 
I saw a brooch at a jeweler's in Bond 
Street a fortnight ago, not an inch wide, 
and without an}' singular jewel in it, yet 
worth y^3,ooo. iVnd I wish I could tell 
you what this "play" costs altogether in 
England, France, and Russia annually. 
But it is a pretty game, and, on certain 
terms, I like it ; nay, I don' t see it played 
quite as much as I would fain have it. You 
ladies like to lead the fashion — by all 
means lead it — lead it thoroughly, lead it 
far enough. Dress yourselves nicely, and 
dress everybody else nicely. Lead the 
fashions for the poor first ; make theijt 
look well, and you yourselves will look, in 
ways of which you have now no concep- 
tion, all the better. The fashions you 
have set for some time among your peas- 
antry are not pretty ones ; their doublets 
45 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

are too irregularly slashed, and the wind 
blows too frankly through them. 

Then there are other games, wild 
enough, as I could show you if I had time. 

There's playing at literature and playing 
at art — very different both from working 
at literature or w^orking at art, but I've no 
time to speak of these. I pass to the 
greatest of all — the play of plays, the great 
gentlemen's game, which ladies like them 
best to play at, — the game of War. It is 
entrancingly pleasant to the imagination ; 
the facts of it not always so pleasant. We 
dress for it, however, more finely than for 
any other sport, and go out to it not merely 
in scarlet, as to hunt, but in scarlet and 
gold and all manner of fine colors ; of 
course we could fight better in grey, and 
without feathers ; but all nations have 
agreed that it is good to be well dressed at 
this play. Then the bats and balls are 
very costly ; our English and French hats, 
with the balls and wickets, even those 
which we don't make any use of, costing, 
46 



Work. 

I suppose, now about fifteen millions of 
money annually to each nation, all of 
which you know is paid for by hard labor- 
er's work in the furrow and furnace. A 
costly game ! — not to speak of its conse- 
quences ; I will say at present nothing of 
these. The mere immediate cost of all 
these plays is what I want you to consider ; 
they all cost deadly work somewhere, as 
many of us know too well. The jewel- 
cutter, whose sight fails over the dia- 
monds ; the weaver, whose arm fails over 
the web ; the iron-forger, whose breath 
fails before the furnace — they know what 
work is — they, who have all the work 
and none of the play, except a kind they 
have named for themselves down in the 
black north country, where "play" means 
being laid up by sickness. It is a pretty 
example for philologists, of varying dialect, 
this change in the sense of the word 
"play" as used in the black country of 
Birmingham, and the red and black coun- 
try of Baden Baden. Yes, gentlemen and 
47 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

gentlewomen of England, who think ' ' one 
moment unamused a misery, not made for 
feeble man," this is what yon have brought 
the word ' ' play ' ' to mean in the heart of 
merry England ! You may have your 
fluting and piping, but there are sad chil- 
dren sitting in the market-place, who, in- 
deed, cannot say to you, ' ' We have piped 
unto you, and ye have not danced," but 
eternally shall say to you, "We have 
mourned unto you, and ye have not la- 
mented. ' ' 

This, then, is the first distinction be- 
tween the "upper and lower" classes. 
And this is one which is by no means 
necessary, which indeed must, in process 
of good time, be by all honest men's con- 
sent abolished. Men will be taught that 
an existence of play, sustained by the 
blood of other creatures, is a good exist- 
ence for gnats and sucking fish, but not for 
men ; that neither days nor lives can be 
made holy by doing nothing in them ; that 
the best prayer at the beginning of a day 
48 



Work. 

is that we may not lose its moments, and 
the best grace before meat, the conscious- 
ness that we have justly earned our dinner. 
And when we have this much of plain 
Christianity preached to us again, and 
enough respect what we regard as inspira- 
tion as not to think that ' ' Son, go work 
to-day in my vineyard," means, "Fool, 
go play to-day in my vineyard," we shall 
all be workers, in one way or another ; 
and this much at least of the distinction 
between "upper" and "lower" forgotten. 
11. I pass then to our second distinction, 
between the rich and poor, between Dives 
and Lazarus, — distinction which exists 
more sternly, I suppose, in this day than 
ever in the world, Pagan or Christian, till 
now. I will put it sharply before you, to 
begin with, merely by reading two para- 
graphs which I cut from two papers that 
lay on my breakfast-table on the same 
morning, the 25th of November, 1864. The 
piece about the rich Russian at Paris is com- 
mon-place enough, and stupid besides (for 

4 49 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 



fifteen francs — 12^. 6d. — is nothing for a 
rich man to give for a conple of peaches, 
ont of season). Still, the two paragraphs 
printed on the same day are worth put- 
ting side by side. 

"Such a man is now here. He is a Rus- 
sian, and, with your permission, we will 
call him Count Teufelskine. In dress he 
is sublime ; art is considered in that toilet, 
the harmony of color respected, the cJiiar^ 
osciiro evident in well-selected contrast. 
In manners he is dignified, — nay, perhaps 
apathetic ; nothing disturbs the placid 
serenity of that calm exterior. One day 
our friend breakfasted chc3 Bignon. When 
the bill came he read, 'Two peaches, 
I5f.' He paid. 'Peaches scarce, I pre- 
sume?' was his sole remark. 'No, sir,' 
replied the waiter, 'but Teufelskinesare.' '^ 
— Telegraphy November 25, 1864. 

"Yesterday morning, at eight o'clock, 
a woman, passing a dung heap in the stone 
yard near the recently-erected almshouses 
in Shadwell Gap, High Street, Shadwell, 



Work. 

called the attention of a Thames police- 
constable to a man in a sitting position on 
the dnng heap, and said she was afraid he 
was dead. Her fears proved to be trne. 
The wretched creature appeared to have 
been dead several hours. He had perished 
of cold and wet, and the rain had been 
beating down on him all night. The 
deceased was a bone-picker. He was in 
the lowest stage of poverty, poorly clad, 
and half-starved. The police had fre- 
quently driven him away from the stone 
3^ard, between sunset and sunrise, and told 
him to go home. He selected a most deso- 
late spot for his wretched death. A penny 
and some bones were found in his pockets. 
The deceased was between fifty and sixty 
years of age. Inspector Roberts, of the K 
division, has given directions for inquiries 
to be made at the lodging-houses respect- 
ing the deceased, to ascertain his identity 
if possible." — Morni7ig Post^ November 
25, 186^. 

You have the separation thus in brief 
51 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 



compass ; and I want you to take notice of 
the "a penny and some bones were found 
in his pockets," and to compare it with 
this third statement, from the Telegraph of 
January i6th of this year : — 

'^ Again, the dietary scale for adult and 
juvenile paupers was drawn up by the most 
conspicuous political economists in Eng- 
land. It is low in quantity, but it is suf- 
ficient to support nature ; yet within ten 
years of the passing of the Poor Law Act, 
we heard of the paupers in the Andover 
Union gnawing the scraps of putrid flesh 
and sucking the marrow from the bones of 
horses which they were employed to crush." 

You see my reason for thinking that our 
Lazarus of Christianity has some advan- 
tage over the Jewish one. Jewish Lazarus 
expected, or at least prayed, to be fed with 
crumbs from the rich man's table ; but our 
Lazarus is fed with crumbs from the dog's 
table. 

Now this distinction between rich and 
poor rests on two bases. Within its pro- 
52 



Work. 

per limits, on a basis which is lawful and 
everlastingly necessary ; beyond them, on 
a basis unlawful, and everlastingly corrupt- 
ing the frame- work of society. The lawful 
basis of wealth is, that a man who works 
should be paid the fair value of his work ; 
and that if he does not choose to spend it 
to-day, he should have free leave to keep 
it, and spend it to-morrow. Thus, an 
industrious man working daily, and laying 
by daily, attains at last the possession of an 
accumulated sum of wealth, to which he 
has absolute right. The idle person who 
will not work, and the wasteful person who 
la)S nothing by, at the end of the same 
time will be doubly poor — poor in posses- 
sion, and dissolute in moral habit ; and he 
will then naturally covet the money which 
the other has saved. And if he is then 
allowed to attack the other, and rob him of 
his well-earned wealth, there is no more 
any motive for saving, or any reward for 
good conduct ; and all society is thereupon 
dissolved, or exists only in systems of 
53 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 



rapine. Therefore the first necessity of 
social life is the clearness of national con- 
science in enforcing the law — that he 
shonld keep who has justly earned. 

That law, I say, is the proper basis of 
distinction between rich and poor. But 
there is also a false basis of distinction ; 
namely, the power held over those who 
earn wealth by those who levy or exact it. 
There will be always a number of men 
who would fain set themselves to the accu- 
mulation of wealth as the sole object of 
their lives. Necessarily, that class of men 
is an uneducated class, inferior in intellect, 
and more or less cowardly. It is physically 
impossible for a well-educated, intellectual, 
or brave man to make money the chief 
object of his thoughts ; as physically im- 
possible as it is for him to make his din- 
ner the principal object of them. All 
healthy people like their dinners, but their 
dinner is not the main object of their lives. 
So all healthily-minded people like making 
money — ought to like it, and to enjoy the 
54 



Work. 

sensation of winning it; but the main ob- 
ject of their life is not money; it is some- 
thing better than money. A good soldier, 
for instance, mainly wishes to do his fight- 
ing well. He is glad of his pay — very 
properly so, and justly grumbles when you 
keep him ten years without it — still, his 
main notion of life is to win battles, not to 
be paid for winning them. So of clergy- 
men. They like pew-rents, and baptismal 
fees, of course ; but yet, if they are brave 
and well educated, the pew-rent is not the 
sole object of their lives, and the baptismal 
fee is not the sole purpose of the baptism ; 
the clergyman's object is essentially to bap- 
tize and preach, not to be paid for preach- 
ing. So of doctors. They like fees, no 
doubt, — ought to like them; yet if they 
are brave and well educated, the entire 
object of their lives is not fees. They, on 
the whole, desire to cure the sick; and — 
if they are good doctors, and the choice 
were fairly put to them — would rather 
cure their patient, and lose their fee, than 
55 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

kill him and get it. And so with all other 
brave and rightly-trained men; their work 
is first, their fee second — very important 
always, but still second. But in every 
nation , as I said, there are a vast class who 
are ill-educated, cowardly, and more or 
less stupid. And with these people, just 
as certainly the fee is first, and the work 
second, as with brave people the work is 
first, and the fee second. x\nd this is no 
small distinction. It is the whole distinc- 
tion in a man ; distinction between life and 
death in him, between heaven and hell for 
him. You cannot serve two masters ; — 
you mnst serve one or the other. If your 
work is first with you, and your fee second, 
work is your master, and the Lord of work, 
who is God. But if your fee is first with 
you, and your work second, fee is your 
master, and the lord of fee, who is the 
Devil ; and not only the Devil, but the 
lowest of devils — the ' ' least erected fiend 
that fell." So there you have it in brief 
terms : Work first — you are God's servants ; 
^56 



Work. 

Fee first— you are the Fiend's. And it 
makes a difference, now and ever, believe 
me, whether you serve Him who has on 
His vesture and thigh written, "King 
of kings," and whose service is perfect 
freedom ; or him on whose vesture and 
thigh the name is written, *^ Slave of 
slaves," and whose service is perfect 
slavery. 

However, in every nation there are, 
and must always be, a certain number 
of these Fiend's servants, who have it 
principally for the object of their lives to 
make money. They are always, as I said, 
more or less stupid, and cannot conceive of 
anything else so nice as money. Stupidity 
is always the basis of the Judas bargain. 
We do great injustice to Iscariot in think- 
ing: him wicked above all common wick- 
edness. He was only a common money- 
lover, and, like all money-lovers, didn't 
understand Christ ; — couldn' t make out 
the worth of Him, or meaning of Him. 
He didn't want Him to be killed. He was 

57 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 



liorror- struck when he found that Christ 
would be killed; threw his money away 
instantly, and hanged himself. How many 
of our j)resent money-seekers, think you, 
would have the grace to hang themselves, 
whoever was killed? But Judas was a 
common, selfish, muddle-headed, pilfering 
fellow ; his hand always in the bag of the 
poor, not caring for them. He didn't un- 
derstand Christ ; — yet believed in Him, 
much more than most of us do ; had seen 
Him do miracles, thought He was quite 
strong enough to shift for Himself, and he, 
Judas, might as well make his ow^n little 
by-perquisites out of the aftair. Christ 
■would come out of it well enough, and he 
liave his thirty pieces. Now, that is the 
money-seeker's idea, all over the world. 
He doesn't hate Christ, but can't under- 
stand Him — doesn't care for Him — sees no 
good in that benevolent business ; makes 
his own little job out of it at all events, 
come what will. And thus, out of every 
mass of men, you have a certain number 
58 



Work. 

of bag-men — your "fee-first" men, whose 
main object is to make money. And they 
do make it — make it in all sorts of unfair 
ways, chiefly by the weight and force of 
money itself, or what is called the power 
of capital ; that is to say, the power which 
money, once obtained, has over the labor 
of the poor, so that the capitalist can take 
all its produce to himself, except the labor- 
er's food. That is the modern Judas' s 
way of "carrying the bag," and "bearing 
what is put therein." 

Nay, but (it is asked) how is that an un- 
fair advantage? Has not the man who has 
worked for the money a right to use it as 
he best can? No; in this respect, money 
is now exactly what mountain promonto- 
ries over public roads were in old times. 
The barons fought for them fairly : — the 
strongest and cunningest got them ; then 
fortified them, and made every one who 
passed below pay toll. Well, capital now 
is exactly what crags were then. Men fight 
fairly (we will, at least, grant so much, 
59 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 



though it is more than we ought) for their 
money ; but, once having got it, the forti- 
fied millionaire can make everybody who 
passes below pay toll to his million, and 
build another tower of his money castle. 
And I can tell you, the poor vagrants by 
the roadside suffer now quite as much from 
the bag-baron, as ever they did from the 
crag-baron. Bags and crags have just the 
same result on rags. I have not time, 
however, to-night to show you in how many 
ways the power of capital is unjust ; but 
this one great principle I have to assert — 
you will find it quite indisputably true — 
that whenever money is the principal object 
of life with either man or nation, it is both 
got ill, and spent ill ; and does harm both 
in the getting and spending ; but when it 
is not the principal object, it and all other 
things will be well got, and well spent. 
And here is the test, with every man, of 
whether money is the principal object with 
him, or not. If in mid-life he could pause 
and say, ' ' Now I have enough to live upon, 
60 



Work. 

I'll live upon it; and having well earned 
it, I will also well spend it, and go out of 
the world poor, as I came into it," then 
money is not principal with him ; but if, 
having enough to live upon in the manner 
befitting his character and rank, he still 
wants to make more, and to die rich, then 
money is the principal object with him, 
and it becomes a curse to himself, and gen- 
erally to those who spend it after him. 
For you know it must be spent some day ; 
the only question is whether the man who 
makes it shall spend it, or some one else. 
And generally it is better for the maker 
to spend it, for he will know best its value 
and use. This is the true law of life. And 
if a man does not choose thus to spend his 
money, he must either hoard it or lend it, 
and the worst thing he can generally do is 
to lend it ; for borrowers are nearly always 
ill-spenders, and it is with lent money that 
all evil is mainly done, and all unjust war 
protracted. 

For observe what the real fact is, respect- 

6i 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 



iug- loans to foreign military governments, 
and how strange it is. If your little boy 
came to >ou to ask for money to spend in 
squibs and crackers, you would think twice 
before you gave it to him, and you would 
have some idea that it was wasted, when 
you saw it fly off in fireworks, even though 
he did no mischief with it. But the Rus- 
sian children, and Austrian children, come 
to you, borrowing mone\', not to spend in 
innocent squibs, but in cartridges and bay- 
onets to attack you in India with, and to 
keep down all noble life in Italy with, and 
to murder Polish women and children with ; 
and that you will give at once, because 
they pay you interest for it. Now, in 
order to pay you that interest, they must 
tax every working peasant in their domin- 
ions ; and on that work you live. Vou 
therefore at once rob the Austrian peasant, 
assassinate or banish the Polish peasant, 
and you live on the produce of the tlieft, 
and the bribe for the assassination ! That 
is the broad tact — that is the practical 
62 



Work. 

meaning of your foreign loans, and of most 
large interest of money ; and then you 
quarrel with Bishop Colenso, forsooth, as 
if he denied the Bible, and you believed it ! 
Though, wretches as you are, every delib- 
erate act of your lives is a new defiance of 
its primary orders ; and as if, for most of 
the rich men of England at this moment, 
it were not indeed to be desired, as the best 
thing at least for them^ that the Bible 
should not be true, since against them 
these words are written in it : " The rust 
of your gold and silver shall be a witness 
against you, and shall eat your flesh, as it 
were fire." 

III. I pass now to our third condition of 
separation, between the men who work 
with the hand, and those who work with 
the head. 

And here we have at last an inevitable 
distinction. There must be work done by 
the arms, or none of us could live. There 
viiLst be work done by the brains, or the 
life we get would not be worth having. 
63 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

And the same men cannot do both. There 
is rough work to be done, and rough men 
must do it ; there is gentle work to be 
done, and gentlemen must do it ; and it is 
physically impossible that one class should 
do, or divide, the work of the other. And, 
it is of no use to try to conceal this sorrow- 
ful fact by fine words, and to talk to the 
workman about the honorableness of man- 
ual labor, and the dignity of humanity. 
That is a grand old proverb of Sancho 
Panza's, "Fine words butter no parsnips ; " 
and I can tell you that, all over England 
just now, you workmen are buying a great 
deal too much butter at that dairy. Rough 
work, honorable or not, takes the life out 
of us ; and the man who has been heaving 
clay out of a ditch all day, or driving an 
express train against the north wind all 
night, or holding a collier's helm in a gale 
on a lee-shore, or whirling white hot iron 
at a furnace mouth, that man is not the 
same at the end of his day, or night, as 
one who has been sitting in a quiet room, 
64 



Work. 

with everything comfortable about him, 
reading books, or classing butterflies, or 
painting pictures. If it is any comfort to 
you to be told that the rough work is the 
more honorable of the two, I should be 
sorry to take that much of consolation from 
you ; and in some sense I need not. The 
rough work is, at all events, real, honest, 
and, generally, though not always, useful ; 
while the fine work is, a great deal of it, 
foolish and false as well as fine, and there- 
fore dishonorable; but when both kinds 
are equally well and worthily done, the 
head's is the noble work, and the hand's 
the ignoble ; and of all hand-work whatso- 
ever, necessary for the maintenance of life, 
those old words, " In the sweat of thy face 
thou shalt eat bread," indicate that the 
inherent nature of it is one of calamity ; and 
that the ground, cursed for our sake, casts 
also some shadow of degradation into our 
contest with its thorn and its thistle ; so 
that all nations have held their days hon- 
orable, or "holy," and constituted them 
5 ' 65 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

*'holydays" or "holidays," by making 
them days of rest; and the promise, which, 
among all our distant hopes, seems to cast 
the chief brightness over death, is that 
blessing of the dead who die in the Lord, 
that " they rest from their labors, and their 
works do follow them." 

And thus the perpetual question and con- 
test must arise, Who is to do this rough 
work ? and how is the worker of it to be 
comforted, redeemed, and rewarded? and 
what kind of play should he have, and 
what rest, in this world, sometimes, as well 
as in the next? Well, my good working 
friends, these questions will take a little 
time to answer yet. They must be an- 
swered ; all good men are occupied with 
them, and all honest thinkers. There's 
grand head-work doing about them ; but 
much must be discovered, and much at- 
tempted in vain, before anything decisive 
can be told you. Only note these few par- 
ticulars, which are already sure. 

As to the distribution of the hard work. 
66 



Work. 

None of us, or very few of us, do either 
hard or soft work because we think we 
ought, but because we have chanced to fall 
into the way of it, and cannot help our- 
selves. Now, nobody does anything well 
that they cannot help doing : work is only 
done well when it is done with a will, and 
no man has a thoroughly sound will unless 
he knows he is doing what he should, and 
is in his place. And, depend upon it, all 
work must be done at last, not in a disor- 
derly, scrambling, doggish way, but in an 
ordered, soldierly, human way — a lawful 
way. Men are enlisted for the labor that 
kills — the labor of war : they are counted , 
trained, fed, dressed, and praised for that. 
Let them be enlisted also for the labor that 
feeds : let them be counted, trained, fed, 
dressed, praised for that. Teach the plough 
exercise as carefully as you do the sword 
exercise, and let the officers of troops of 
life be held as much gentlemen as the 
officers of troops of death, and all is done ; 
but neither this, nor any other right thing, 
67 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 



can be accomplished — you can't even see 
your way to it — unless, first of all, both 
servant and master are resolved that, come 
what will of it, they will do each other 
justice. People are perpetually squabbling 
about what will be best to do, or easiest to 
do, or advisablest to do, or profitablest to 
do ; but they never, so far as I hear them 
talk, ask what it is just to do. And 
it is the law of heaven that you shall not 
be able to judge what is wise or easy, un- 
less you are first resolved to judge what is 
just, and to do it. That is the one thing 
constantly reiterated by our Master — the 
order of all others that is given oftenest — 
"Do justice and judgment." That's your 
Bible order; that's the " Service of God, " 
not praying nor psalm-singing. You are 
told, indeed, to sing psalms when you are 
merry, and to pray when you need any- 
thing ; and, by the perversion of the Evil 
Spirit, we get to think that praying and 
psalm-singing are "service.'' If a child 
finds itself in want of anything, it runs in 
68 



Work. 

and asks its father for it — does it call that^ 
doing its father a service ? If it begs for a 
toy or a piece of cake — does it call that 
serving its father? That, with God, is 
prayer, and He likes to hear it : He likes 
you to ask Him for cake when you want 
it ; but He doesn't call that "serving 
Him." Begging is not serving : God likes 
mere beggars as little as you do — He likes 
honest servants, not beggars. So, when a 
child loves its father very much, and is 
very happy, it may sing little songs about 
him ; but it doesn't call that serving its 
father; neither is singing songs about God, 
serving God. It is enjoying ourselves, if 
it's anything; most probably it is nothing; 
but if it's anything, it is serving ourselves, 
not God. And yet we are impudent 
enough to call our beggings and chantings 
"Divine Service:" we say " Divine ser- 
vice will be 'performed'" — (that's our 
word — the form of it gone through) "at 
eleven o' clock. ' ' Alas ! — unless we perform 
Divine service in every willing act of our 
69 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

life, we never perform it at all. The one 
Divine work — the one ordered sacrifice — 
is to do justice ; and it is the last we are 
ever inclined to do. Anything rather than 
that ! As much charity as you choose, 
but no justice. "Nay," you will say, 
"charity is greater than justice. " Yes, 
it is greater ; it is the summit of justice — 
it is the temple of which justice is the 
foundation. But you can't have the top 
without the bottom ; you cannot build 
upon charity. You must build upon jus- 
tice for this main reason, that you have 
not, at first, charity to build with. It is 
the last reward of good work. Do justice 
to your brother (you can do that, whether 
you love him or not), and you will come 
to love him. But do injustice to him, be- 
cause you don't love him, and you will 
come to hate him. It is all very fine to 
think you can build upon charity to begin 
with ; but you will find all you have got to 
begin with, begins at home, and is essen- 
tially love of yourself. You well-to-do peo- 
70 



Work. 

pie, for instance, who are here to-night, 
will go to " Divine service " next Sunday, 
all nice and tidy, and your little children 
will have their tight little Sunday boots 
on, and lovely little Sunday feathers in 
their hats; and you'll think, complacently 
and piously, how lovely they look ! So 
they do; and you love them heartily, and 
like sticking feathers in their hats. That's 
all right. That is charity ; but it is charity 
beginning at home. Then you will come 
to the poor little crossing-sweeper, got up 
also, — it, in its Sunday dress, — the dirtiest 
rags it has, — that it may beg the better: 
we shall give it a penny, and think how 
good we are. That's charity going abroad. 
But what does Justice say, walking and 
watching near us ? Christian Justice has 
been strangely mute, and seemingly blind ; 
and, if not blind, decrepit, this many a 
day: she keeps her accounts still, however, 
— quite steadily — doing them at nights, 
carefully, with her bandage off, and 
through acutest spectacles (the only mod- 
71 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

ern scientific invention she cares about). 
Yon ninst pnt yonr ear down ever so close 
to her lips to hear her speak; and then yon 
will start at what she first whispers, for it 
will certainly be, "Why shonldn't that 
little crossing-sweeper have a feather on 
its head, as well as yonr own child?'' 
Then yon may ask Jnstice, in an amazed 
manner, "How she can possibly be so 
foolish as to think children conld sweep 
crossings with feathers on their heads?" 
Then yon stoop again, and Jnstice says — 
still in her dnll, stnpid way — "Then, why 
don't yon, every other Snnday, leave yonr 
child to sweep the crossing, and take the 
little sweeper to clinrch in a hat and 
feather? " Mercy on ns (yon think), what 
will she say next ? And yon answer, of 
course, that "yon don't, becanse every- 
body onglit to remain content in the posi- 
tion in which Providence has placed them." 
Ah, my friends, that's the gist of the whole 
qncstion. Did Providence pnt them in that 
position, or did you ? Yon knock a man 
72 



Work. 

into a ditch, and then you tell him to re- 
main content in the "position in which 
Providence has placed him." That's mod- 
ern Christianity. You say — " ^^ did not 
knock him into the ditch." How do you 
know what you have done, or are doing ? 
That's just what we have all got to know, 
and what we shall never know, until the 
question with us every morning, is, not 
how to do the gainful thing, but how to do 
the just thing ; nor imtil we are at least so 
far on the way to being Christian, as to 
have understood that maxim of the poor 
half-way Mahometan, "One hour in the 
execution of justice is worth seventy years 
of prayer." 

Supposing, then, we have it determined 
with appropriate justice, who is to do the 
hand-work, the next questions must be how 
the hand-workers are to be paid, and how 
they are to be refreshed, and what play 
they are to have. Now, the possible quan- 
tity of play depends on the possible qu9.n- 
tity of pay ; and the quantity of pay is not 
73 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

a matter for consideration to hand-workers 
onl}^ but to all workers. Generally, good, 
useful work, whether of the hand or head, 
is either ill -paid, or not paid at all. I don't 
say it should be so, but it always is so. 
People, as a rule, only pay for being 
amused or being cheated, not for being 
served. Five thousand a year to your 
talker, and a shilling a day to your fighter, 
digger, and thinker, is the rule. None of 
the best head-work in art, literature, or 
science, is ever paid for. How much do 
you think Homer got for his Iliad ? or 
Dante for his Paradise ? Only bitter bread 
and salt, and going up and down other 
people's stairs. In science, the man who 
discovered the telescope, and first saw 
•heaven, was paid with a dungeon; the 
man who invented the microscope, and 
first saw earth, died of starvation, driven 
from his home: it is indeed very clear that 
God means all thoroughly good work and 
talk to be done for nothing. Baruch, the 
scribe, did not get a penny a line for writ- 

74 



Work. 

ing Jeremiah's second roll for him, I 
fancy ; and St. Stephen did not get bish- 
op's pay for that long sermon of his to the 
Pharisees ; nothing but stones. For indeed 
that is the world-father's proper payment. 
So surely as any of the world's children 
work for the world's good, honestly, with 
head and heart, and come to it, saying, 
"Give us a little bread, just to keep the 
life in us," the world-father answers them, 
' ' No, my children, not bread ; a stone, if 
you like, or as many as you need, to keep 
you quiet." But the hand-workers are not 
so ill off as all this comes to. The worst 
that can happen to yoit is to break stones ; 
not be broken by them. And for you 
there will come a time for better payment : 
some da}^, assuredly, more pence will be 
paid to Peter the Fisherman, and fewer to 
Peter the Pope ; we shall pay people not 
quite so much for talking in Parliament 
and doing nothing, as for holding their 
tongues out of it and doing something ; 
we shall pay our ploughman a little more 
75 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

and our lawyer a little less, and so on ; but, 
at least, we may even now take care that 
wdiatever work is done shall be fully paid 
lor ; and the man who does it be paid for it, 
not somebody else ; and that it shall be 
done in an orderly, soldierh-, well-guided, 
wholesome way, under good captains and 
lieutenants of labor; and that it shall have 
its appointed times of rest, and enough of 
them ; and that in those times the play 
shall be wholesome play, not in theatrical 
gardens, with tin flowers and gas sunshine, 
and girls dancing because of their misery ; 
but in true gardens, with real flowers, and 
real sunshine, and children dancing be- 
cause of their gladness ; so that truly the 
streets vsliall be full (the "streets," mind 
you, not the gutters) of children, playing 
in the midst thereof. We may take care 
that working-men shall have at least as 
o^ood books to read as any bod v else, when 
they've time to read them ; and as com- 
fortable firesides to sit at as anybody else, 
when they've time to sit at them. This, 
76 



Work. 

I think, can be managed for you, my 
working friends, in the good time. 

IV. 1 must go on, however, to our last 
head, concerning ourselves all, as workers. 
What is wise work, and what is foolish 
work ? What the difference between vsense 
and nonsense, in daily occupation? 

Well, wise work is, briefly, work ivith 
God. Foolish work is work as^ainst God. 
And work done with God, which He will 
help, may be briefly described as " Put- 
ting in Order" — that is, enforcing God's 
law of order, spiritual and material, over 
men and things. The first thing you have 
to do, essentially; the real "good work'* 
is, with respect to men, to enforce justice, 
and, with respect to things, to enforce tidi- 
ness and fruitfulness. And against these 
two great human deeds, justice and order, 
there are perpetually two great demons 
contending, — the devil of iniquity, or 
inequity, and the devil of disorder, or of 
death ; for death is only consummation of 
disorder. You have to fight these two 
77 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

fiends daily. So far as you don't fight 
against the fiend of iniquity, you work for 
him. You "work iniquity," and the 
judgment upon you, for all your "Lord, 
Lord's," will be "Depart from me, ye 
that work iniquity." And so far as you 
do not resist the fiend of disorder, you 
work disorder, and you yourself do the 
work of Death, which is sin, and has for 
its wages. Death himself. 

Observe, then, all wise work is mainly 
threefold in character. It is honest, useful, 
and cheerful. 

I. It is HONEST. I hardly know any- 
thing more strange than that you recognize 
honesty in play, and }'ou do not in work. 
In your lightest games, you have always 
some one to see what you call ' ' fair-play. ' ' 
In boxing, you must hit fair ; in racing, 
start fair. Your English watchword is 
fair-play; your English hatred, foul-pla}'. 
Did it ever strike you that you wanted 
another watchword also, fair-work, and 
another hatred also, foul-work? Your 

78 



Work. 

prize-fighter has some honor in him yet ; 
and so have the men in the ring: round 
him : they will judge him to lose the 
match, by foul hitting. But your prize- 
merchant gains his match by foul selling, 
and no one cries out against that. You 
drive a gambler out of the gambling-room 
who loads dice; but you leave a tradesman 
in flourishing business, who loads scales I 
For observe, all dishonest dealing is load- 
ing scales. What does it matter whether 
I get short weight, adulterate substance, 
or dishonest fabric ? The fault in the fabric 
is incomparably the worst of the two. Give 
me short measure of food, and I only lose 
by you ; but give me adulterate food, and 
I die by you. Here, then, is your chief 
duty, you workmen and tradesmen — to be 
true to yourselves, and to us who would 
help you. We can do nothing for you, 
nor you for yourselves, without honesty. 
Get that, you get all ; without that, your 
suffrages, your reforms, your free-trade 
measures, your institutions of science, are 

79 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

all in vain. It is useless to put your heads 
together, if you can't put your hearts 
together. Shoulder to shoulder, right hand 
to right hand among yourselves, and no 
wrong hand to anybody else, and you'll 
win the world yet. 

II. Then, secondly, wise work is USE- 
FUL. No man minds, or ought to mind, 
its being hard, if only it comes to some- 
thing; but when it is hard, and comes to 
nothing; when all our bees' business turns 
to spiders' ; and for honey-comb we have 
only resultant cobweb, blown away by the 
next breeze — that is the cruel thing for the 
worker. Yet do we ever ask ourselves, 
personally, or even nationally, whether 
our work is coming to anything or not ? 
We don't care to keep what has been 
nobly done; still less do we care to do 
nobly what others would keep; and, least 
of all, to make the work itself useful in- 
stead of deadly to the doer, so as to use 
his life indeed, but not to waste it. Of all 
wastes, the greatest waste that }'ou can 

So 



Work. 

commit is the waste of labor. If you went 
down in the morning into your dairy, and 
you found that your youngest child had 
got down before you ; and that he and the 
cat were at play together, and that he had 
poured out all the cream on the floor for 
the cat to lap up, you would scold the 
child, and be sorry the milk was wasted. 
But if, instead of wooden bowls with milk 
in them, there are golden bowls with 
human life in them, and instead of the cat 
to play with — the devil to play with ; and 
you yourself the player; and instead of 
leaving that golden bowl to be broken by 
God at the fountain, you break it in the 
dust yourself, and pour the human blood 
out on the ground for the fiend to lick up, 
— that is no waste ! What ! you perhaps 
think, ' ' to waste the labor of men is not 
to kill them." Is it not? I should like 
to know how you could kill them more 
utterly — kill them with second deaths, 
seventh deaths, hundredfold deaths ? It is 
the slightest way of killing to stop a man's 
6 8i 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

breath. Nay, the hunger, and the coldj 
and the little whistling bullets — our love- 
messengers between nation and nation — 
have brought pleasant messages from us to 
many a man before now; orders of sweet 
release, and leave at last to go where he 
will be most welcome and most happy. 
At the worst you do but shorten his life, 
you do not corrupt his life. But if you put 
him to base labor, if you bind his thoughts, 
if you blind his eyes, if you blunt his 
hopes, if you steal his joys, if you stunt 
his body, and blast his soul, and at last 
leave him not so much as to reap the poor 
fruit of his degradation, but gather that for 
yourself, and dismiss him to the grave, 
when you have done with him, having, so 
far as in you lay, made the walls of that 
grave everlasting (though, indeed, I fancy 
the goodly bricks of some of our family 
vaults will hold closer in the resurrection 
day than the sod over the laborer's head), 
this you think is no waste, and no 
sin ! 

82 



Work. 

III. Then, lastly, wise work is cheer- 
Fui., as a child's work is. And now I want 
you to take one thought home with you, 
and let it stay with you. 

Everybody in this room has been taught 
to pray daily, "Thy kingdom come." 
Now, if we hear a man swear in the 
streets, we think it very wrong, and say 
he "takes God's name in vain." But 
there's a twenty times worse way of taking- 
His name in vain, than that. It is to as% 
God /or what we don't wmit. He doesn't 
like that sort of prayer. If you don't want 
a thing, don't ask for it: such asking is 
the worst mockery of your King -you can 
mock Him with; the soldiers striking Him 
on the head with the reed was nothing to 
that. If you do not wish for His king- 
dom, don't pray for it. But if you do, you 
must do more than pray for it ; you must 
work for it. And, to work for it, you must 
know what it is: we have all prayed for it 
for many a day without thinking. Observe, 
it is a kingdom that is to come to us; we 
83 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

are not to go to it. Also, it is not to be a 
kingdom of tlie dead, but of the living. 
Also, it is not to come all at once, but 
quietly ; nobody knows how. ' ' The king- 
dom of God Cometh not with observation." 
Also, it is not to come outside of us, but in 
the hearts of us : "The kingdom of God is 
within you." And, being within us, it is 
not a thing to be seen, but to be felt, and 
though it brings all substance of good with 
it, it does not consist in that : "The king- 
dom of God is not meat and drink, but 
righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy 
Ghost :" joy, that is to say, in the holy, 
healthful, and helpful Spirit. Now, if we 
want to work for this kingdom, and to 
bring it, and enter into it, there's just one 
condition to be first accepted. You must 
enter it as children, or not at all ; "Who- 
soever will not receive it as a little child 
shall not enter therein." And again, 
"Suffer little children to come unto me, 
and forbid them not, for of such is the 
kingdom of heaven." 
84 



Work. 

Of such^ observe. Not of children them- 
selves, but of such as children. I believe 
most mothers who read that text think 
that all heaven is to be full of babies. But 
that's not so. There will be children 
there, but the hoary head is the crown. 
* ' Length of days, and long life and peace, ' ' 
that is the blessing, not to die in baby- 
liood. Children die but for their parents^ 
sins ; God means them to live, but he can't 
let them always ; then they have their ear- 
lier place in heaven : and the little child of 
David, vainly prayed for, — the little child 
of Jeroboam, killed by its mother's step on 
its own threshold, — they will be there. 
But weary old David, and weary old Bar- 
zillai, having learned children's lessons at 
last, will be there too, and the one question 
for us all, young or old, is, Have we learned 
our child's lesson? It is the character oi 
children we want, and must gain at our 
peril ; let us see, briefly, in what it con- 
sists. 

The first character of right childhood is 
85 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

that it is Modest. A well-bred child does 
not think it can teach its parents, or that 
it knows everything. It may think its 
father and mother know everything, — per- 
haps that all grown-up peoj^le know every- 
thing; very certainly it is sure that it does 
not. And it is always asking questions, 
and wanting to know more. Well, that is 
the first character of a good and wise man 
at his work. To know that he knows 
very little ; to perceive that there are many 
above him wiser than he; and to be always 
asking questions, wanting to learn, not to 
teach. No one ever teaches well who 
wants to teach, or governs well who wants 
to govern ; it is an old saying (Plato's, but 
I know not if his, first), and as wise as old. 
Then, the second character of right 
childhood is to be Faithful. Perceiving 
that its father knows best what is good for 
it, and having found always, when it has 
tried its own way against his, that he was 
right and it was wrong, a noble child trusts 
him at last wholly, gives him its hand, 
86 



Work. 

and will walk blindfold with him, if he 
bids it. And that is the true character of 
all good men also, as obedient workers, or 
soldiers under captains. They must trust 
their captains ; — they are bound for their 
lives to choose none but those whom they 
can trust. Then, they are not always to 
be thinking that what seems strange to 
them, or wrong in what they are desired 
to do, is strange or wrong. They know 
their captain : where he leads they must 
follow; what he bids, they must do; and 
without this trust and faith, without this 
captainship and soldiership, no great deed, 
no great salvation, is possible to man. 
Among all the nations it is only when this 
faith is attained by them that they become 
great : the Jew, the Greek, and the Ma- 
hometan, agree at least in testifying to 
this. It was a deed of this absolute trust 
which made x^braham the father of the 
faithful ; it was the declaration of the 
power of God as captain over all men, and 
the acceptance of a leader appointed by 
87 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 



Him as commander of the faithful, which 
laid the foundation of whatever national 
jDower yet exists in the East ; and the deed 
of the Greeks, which has become the type 
of unselfish and noble soldiership to all 
lands, and to all times, was commemorated, 
on the tomb of those who gave their lives 
to do it, in the most pathetic, so far as I 
know, or can feel, of all human utterances : 
"Oh, stranger, go and tell our people that 
we are lying here, having obeyed their 
words. ' ' 

Then the third character of right child- 
hood is to be Loving and Generous. Give 
a little love to a child, and you get a great 
deal back. It loves everything near it, 
when it is a right kind of child — would 
hurt nothing, and would give the best it 
has away, always, if }'OU need it — does not 
lay plans for getting everything in the 
house for itself, and delights in helping 
people; you cannot please it so much as 
by giving it a chance of being useful, in 
ever so little a way. 

88 



Work. 

And because of all these characters, 
lastly, it is Cheerful. Putting its trust in 
its father, it is careful for nothing — being 
full of love to every creature, it is happy 
always, whether in its play or in its duty. 
Well, that's the great worker's character 
also. Taking no thought for the morrow; 
taking thought only for the duty of the 
day; trusting somebody else to take care of 
to-morrow; knowing indeed what labor is, 
but not what sorrow is; and always ready 
for play — beautiful play, — for lovely 
human play is like the play of the Sun. 
There's a worker for you. He, steady to 
his time, is set as a strong man to run his 
course; but, also, he rejoiceth as a strong 
man to run his course. See how he plays 
in the morning, with the mists below, and 
the clouds above, with a ray here and a 
flash there, and a shower of jewels every- 
where; — that's the Sun's play; and great 
human play is like his — all various— all 
full of light and life, and tender, as the 
dew of the morning. 
89 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

So, then, you have the child's character 
in these four things — Humility, Faith, 
Charity, and Cheerfulness. That's what 
you have got to be converted to. ' ' Except 
ye be converted and become as little chil- 
dren " — You hear much of conversion 
now-a-days; but people always seem to 
think they have got to be made wretched 
by conversion, — to be converted to long 
faces. No, friends, you have got to be 
converted to short ones; you have to repent 
into childhood, to repent into delight, and 
delightsomeness. You can't go into a con- 
venticle but you'll hear plenty of talk of 
backsliding. Backsliding, indeed ! I can 
tell you, on the ways most of us go, the 
faster we slide back the better. Slide back 
into the cradle, if going on is into the 
grave — back, I tell you ; back — out of your 
long faces, and into your long clothes. It 
is among children only, and as children 
only, that you will find medicine for your 
healing and true wisdom for your teaching. 
There is poison in the counsels of the men 
90 



Work. 

of this world; the words they speak are all 
bitterness, "the poison of asps is under 
their lips, ' ' but, ' ' the sucking child shall 
play by the hole of the asp. ' ' There is 
death in the looks of men. "Their eyes 
are privily set against the poor;" they are 
as the uncharmable serpent, the cockatrice, 
which slew by seeing. But ' ' the weaned 
child shall lay his hand on the cockatrice 
den." There is death in the steps of men: 
"their feet are swift to shed blood; they 
have compassed us in our steps like the 
lion that is greedy of his prey, and the 
young lion lurking in secret places," but, 
in that kingdom, the wolf shall lie down 
with the lamb, and the fatling with the 
lion, and "a little child shall lead them." 
There is death in the thoughts of men : the 
world is one wide riddle to them, darker 
and darker as it draws to a close; but the 
secret of it is known to the child, and the 
Lord of heaven and earth is most to be 
thanked in that "He has hidden these 
things from the wise and prudent, and has 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 



revealed them unto babes." Yes, and 
there is death — infinitude of death in the 
principalities and powers of men. As far as 
the east is from the west, so far our sins 
are — not set from us, but multiplied around 
us: the Sun himself, think you he nou; 
"rejoices" to run his course, when he 
plunges westward to the horizon, so widely- 
red, not with clouds, but blood ? And it 
will be red more widely yet. Whatever 
drought of the early and latter rain may 
be, there will be none of that red rain. 
You fortify yourselves, }'ou arm yourselves 
against it in vain; the enemy and avenger 
will be upon you also, unless you learn 
that it is not out of the mouths of the 
knitted gun, or the smoothed rifle, but 
"out of the mouths of babes and suck- 
lings" that the strength is ordained, which 
shall "still the enemy and avenger." 



92 



LECTURE II. 



TRAFFIC. 



LECTURE H. 

TRAFFIC. 
(Delivered in the Town Hall, Bradford.) 

MY good Yorkshire friends, you asked 
me down here among your hills that 
I might talk to you about this Exchange 
you are going to build; but earnestly and 
seriously asking you to pardon me, I am 
going to do nothing of the kind. I cannot 
talk, or at least can say very little, about 
this same Exchange. I must talk of quite 
other things, though not willingly; — I 
could not deserve your pardon, if, when 
you invited me to speak on one subject, I 
wilfully spoke on another. But I cannot 
speak, to purpose, of anything about which 
I do not care; and most simply and sor- 
rowfully I have to tell you, in the outset, 
that I do not care about this Exchange of 
yours. 

95 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 



If, however, when yon sent me your in- 
vitation, I had answered, "I won't come, I 
don't care about the Exchange of Brad- 
ford," you would have been justly offended 
with me, not knowing the reasons of so 
blunt a carelessness. So, I have come 
down, hoping that you will patiently let 
me tell you why, on this, and many other 
such occasions, I now remain silent, when 
formerly I should have caught at the op- 
portunity of speaking to a gracious audi- 
ence. 

In a word, then, I do not care about this 
Exchange, — because yoic don' t ; and be- 
cause you know perfectly well I cannot 
make you. I^ook at the essential circum- 
stances of the case, which you, as business 
men, know perfectly well, though perhaps 
you think I forget them. You are going 
to spend ;^30,ooo, which to you, collect- 
ively, is nothing ; the buying a new coat 
is, as to the cost of it, a much more impor- 
tant matter of consideration to me than 
l)uilding a new Exchange is to you. But 
96 



Traffic. 

you think you may as well have the right 
thing for your money. You know there 
are a great many odd styles of architecture 
about ; you don't want to do anything 
ridiculous ; you hear of me, among others, 
as a respectable architectural man-milliner; 
and you send for me, that I may tell you 
the leading fashion ; and what is, in our 
shops, for the moment, the newest and 
sweetest thing in pinnacles. 

Now, pardon me, for telling you frankly, 
you cannot have good architecture merely 
by asking people's advice on occasion. All 
good architecture is the expression of na- 
tional life and character ; and it is pro- 
duced by a prevalent and eager national 
taste, or desire for beauty. And I want 
you to think a little of the deep signifi- 
cance of this word ^' taste;" for no state- 
ment of mine has been more earnestly or 
oftener controverted than that good taste 
is essentially a moral quality. "No," 
say many of my antagonists, "taste is one 
thing, morality is another^ Tell us what 
7 97 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

is jDretty; we shall be glad to know that ; 
but preach no sermons to ns. ' ' 

Permit me, therefore, to fortify this old 
dogma of mine somewhat. Taste is not 
only a part and an index of morality — it is 
the ONLY morality. The first, and last, and 
closest trial question to any living creature 
is, "What do you like?" Tell me what 
you like, and I'll tell you what you are. 
Go out into the street, and ask the first 
man or woman you meet, what their 
' ' taste ' ' is, and if they answer candidly, 
you know them, body and soul. "You, 
my friend in the rags, with the unsteady 
gait, what do you like ? " "A pipe and a 
quartern of gin. ' ' I know you. ' ' You, 
good woman, with the quick step and tidy 
bonnet, what do you like ? " "A swept 
hearth and a clean tea-table, and my hus- 
band opposite me, and a baby at my 
breast." Good, I know you also. "You, 
little girl with the golden hair and the soft 
eyes, what do you like?" "My canary, 
and a run among the wood hyacinths." 
98 



Traffic. 



' ' You, little boy with the dirty hands and 
the low forehead, what do you like?" "A 
shy at the sparrows, and a game at pitch 
farthing. ' ' Good ; we know them all now. 
What more need we ask ? 

' ' Nay, ' ' perhaps you answer, ' ' we need 
rather to ask what these people and chil- 
dren do, than what they like. If they da 
right, it is no matter that they like what 
is w^rong ; and if they do wrong, it is no 
matter that they like what is right. Doing 
is the great thing ; and it does not matter 
that the man likes drinking, so that he 
does not drink; nor that the little girl likes 
to be kind to her canary, if she will not 
learn her lessons ; nor that the little boy 
likes throwing stones at the sparrows, if 
he goes to the Sunday-school." Indeed, 
for a short time, and in a provisional sense, 
this is true. For if, resolutely, people do 
what is right, in time they come to like 
doing it. But they only are in a right 
moral state when they have come to like 
doing it ; and as long as they don' t like it, 

L.»fC. "^ 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

they are still in a vicious state. The man 
is not in health of body who is always 
thirsting for the bottle in the cnpboard, 
though he bravely bears his thirst; but the 
man who heartily enjoys w^ater in the 
morning and wine in the evening, each in 
its proper quantity and time. And the 
entire object of true education is to make 
j^eople not merely do the right things, but 
enjoy the right things — not merely indus- 
trious, but to love industry — not merely 
learned, but to love knowledge — not merely 
pure, but to love purity — not merely just, 
but to hunger and thirst after justice. 

But you may answer or think, ' ' Is the 
liking for outside ornaments, — for pictures, 
or statues, or furniture, or architecture, — a 
moral quality?" Yes, most surely, if a 
rightly-set liking. Taste for any pictures 
or statues is not a moral quality, but taste 
for good ones is. Only, here again w^e have 
to define the word "good." I don't mean 
by "good," clever — or learned — or diffi- 
cult in the doing. Take a picture by 

ICX) 



Traffic. 

Teniers^ of sots quarreling over their dice: 
it is an entirely clever j^icture ; so clever 
that nothing in its kind has ever been done 
equal to it ; but it is also an entirely base 
and evil picture. It is an expression of 
delight in the prolonged contemplation of 
a vile thing, and delight in that is an 
"unmannered," or "immoral" quality. 
It is "bad taste" in the profoundest sense, 
— it is the taste of the devils. On the 
other hand, a picture of Titian's, or a 
Greek statue, or a Greek coin, or a Turner 
landscape, expresses delight in the per- 
petual contemplation of a good and perfect 
thing. That is an entirely moral quality, 
— it is the taste of the angels. And all 
delight in art, and all love of it, resolve 
themselves into simple love of that which 
deserves love. That deserving is the quality 
which we call "loveliness" — (we ought to 
have an opposite word, hateliness, to be 
said of the things which deserve to be 
hated) ; and it is not an indifferent nor 
optional thing whether we love this or 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 



that; but it is just the vital function of all 
our being. What we like determines what 
we are^ and is the sign of what we are ; 
and to teach taste is inevitably to form 
character. As I was thinking over this, 
in walking up Fleet Street, the other day, 
my eye caught the title of a book standing 
open in a bookseller's window. It was — 
"On the necessity of the diffusion of taste 
among all classes.'' "Ah," I thought to 
myself, "my classifying friend, when you 
have diffused your taste, where will your 
classes be ? The man who likes what you 
like, belongs to the same class with you, I 
think. Inevitably so. You may put him 
to other work if you choose ; but, by the 
condition you have brought him into, he 
will dislike the other work as much as you 
would yourself. You get hold of a scaven- 
ger, or a costermonger, who enjoyed the 
Newgate Calendar for literature, and ' Pop 
goes the Weasel' for music. You think 
you can make him like Dante and Beet- 
hoven ? I wish you joy of your lessons ; 



Traffic. 

but if you do, you have made a gentleman 
of him, — he won't like to go back to his 
costermongering. ' ' 

And so completely and unexceptionally 
is this so, that, if I had time to-night, I 
could show you that a nation cannot be 
affected by any vice, or weakness, without 
expressing it, legibly, and forever, either 
in bad art, or by want of art ; and that 
there is no national virtue, small or great, 
which is not manifestly expressed in all 
the art which circumstances enable the 
people possessing that virtue to produce. 
Take, for instance, your great English 
virtue of enduring and patient courage. 
You have at present in England only one 
art of any consequence — that is, iron- 
working. You know thoroughly well how 
to cast and hammer iron. Now, do you 
think in those masses of lava which you 
build volcanic cones to melt, and which 
you forge at the mouths of the Infernos 
3^ou have created ; do you think, on those ^ 
iron plates, your courage and endurance 
103 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

are not written forever — not merely with 
an iron pen, but on iron parchment ? And 
take also your great English vice — Eu- 
ropean vice — vice of all the world — vice of 
all other worlds that roll or shine in 
heaven, bearing with them yet the atmo- 
sphere of hell — the vice of jealousy, which 
brings competition into your commerce, 
treacher^^ into your councils, and dishonor 
into your wars — that vice which has ren- 
dered for you, and for your next neighbor- 
ing nation, the daily occupations of exist- 
ence no longer possible, but with the mail 
upon your breasts and the sword loose in 
its sheath ; so that, at last, you have real- 
ized for all the multitudes of the two great 
peoples who lead the so-called civilization 
of the earth, — you have realized for them 
all, I say, in person and in policy, what 
was once true only of the rough Border 
riders of your Cheviot hills, — 

" They carved at the meal with gloves of steel, 
And they draiik the red wine through the helmet 
barr'd, — " 

I04 



Traffic. 

do you think that this national shame and 
dastardliness of heart are not written as 
legibly on every rivet of your iron armor 
as the strength of the right hands that 
forged it ? Friends, I know not whether 
this thing be the more ludicrous or the 
more melancholy. It is quite unspeakably 
both. Suppose, instead of being now sent 
for by you, I had been sent for by some 
private gentleman, living in a suburban 
house, with his garden separated only by a 
fruit-w^all from his next door neighbor's ; 
and he had called me to consult with him 
on the furnishing of his drawing-room. I 
begin looking about me, and find the walls 
rather bare ; I think such and such a paper 
might be desirable — perhaps a little fresco 
here and there on the ceiling — a damask 
curtain or so at the windows. "Ah," says 
my employer, "damask curtains, indeed ! 
That's all very fine, but you know I can't 
afford that kind of thing just now ! " " Yet 
the world credits you with a splendid 
income!" "Ah, yes," says my friend, 
105 



The Crown of WiUl Olive. 

*^but do you know, at present, I am 
obliged to spend it nearly all in steel- 
traps?" ''Steel-traps! for whom?" *'Why, 
for that fellow on tlie other side of the 
wall, you know; we're very good friends, 
capital friends; but we are obliged to keep 
our traps set on both sides of the wall; we 
could not possibly keep on friendly terms 
without them, and our spring-guns. The 
worst of it is, we are both clever fellows 
enough; and there's never a day passes that 
we don't find out a new^ l-^ap, or a new 
gun-barrel, or something; we spend about 
fifteen millions a year each on our traps, 
take it altogether; and I don't see how 
we're to do with less." A hiq-hlv comic 
state of life for two private gentlemen ! 
But for two nations, it seems to me, not 
wholly comic! Bedlam would be comic, 
perhaps, if there were only one madman 
in it; and your Christmas pantomime is 
comic, when there is only one clown in it; 
but when the whole world turns clown, 
and paints itself red with its own heart's 
106 



Traffic. 

blood instead of veniiilioii, it is sometliinj^ 
else than comic, 1 think. 

Mind, I know a great deal of this is play, 
and willingly allow for that. Yon don't 
know what to do with yourselves for a sen- 
sation: fox-hunting and cricketing will not 
carry you through the whole of this unen- 
durably long mortal life: you liked pop- 
guns when you were schoolboys, and rifles 
and Armstrongs are only the same things 
better made; but then the worst of it is, 
that what was play to you when boys, was 
not play to the sparrows; and what is play 
to you now, is not play to the small birds 
of State neither; and for the black eagles, 
>'ou are somewhat shy of taking shots at 
them, if I mistake not. 

I must get back to the matter in hand, 
however. Believe me, without farther 
instance, I could show you, in all time, 
that every nation's vice, or virtue, was 
written in its art; the soldiership of early 
Greece; the sensuality of late Italy; the 
visionary religion of Tuscany; the splendid 
107 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

human energy and beauty of Venice. I 
have no time to do this to-night (I have 
done it elsewhere before now); but I pro- 
ceed to apply the principle to ourselves in 
a more searching manner. 

I notice that among all the new build- 
ings that ^cover your once wild hills, 
churches and schools are mixed, in due, 
that is to say, in large proportion, wnth 
your mills and mansions, and I notice also 
that the churches and schools are almost 
always Gothic, and the mansions and mills 
are never Gothic. Will you allow me to 
ask precisely the meaning of this? For, 
remember, it is peculiarly a modern phe- 
nomenon. When Gothic was invented, 
houses were Gothic as well as churches; 
and when the Italian style superseded the 
Gothic, churches were Italian as well as 
houses. If there is a Gothic spire to the 
cathedral of Antwerp, there is a Gothic 
belfry to the Hotel de Ville at Brussels; if 
Inigo Jones builds an Italian Whitehall, 
Sir Christopher Wren builds an Italian vSt. 
loS 



Traffic. 

Paul's. But now you live under one school 
of arcliitecture, and worship under another. 
What do you mean by doing this? Am I 
to understand that you are thinking- of 
changing your architecture back to Gothic; 
and that you treat your churches experi- 
mentally, because it does not matter what 
mistakes you make in a church? Or am I 
to understand that you consider Gothic a 
pre-eminently sacred and beautiful mode 
of building, which you think, like the fine 
frankincense, should be mixed for the tab- 
ernacle only, and reserved for your relig- 
ious services? For if this be the feelinof, 
though it may vseem at first as if it were 
graceful and reverent, you will find that, 
at the root of the matter, it signifies neither 
more nor less than that you have separated 
your religion from your life. 

For consider what a wide significance 
this fact has; and remember that it is not 
you only, but all the people of England, 
who are behaving thus just now. 

You have all got into the habit of call- 
109 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

ing the church "the house of God.'* I 
have seen, over the doors of many churches, 
the legend actually carved, ^^ This is the 
house of God, and this is the gate of heaven." 
Now, note where that legend comes from, 
and of what place it was first spoken. A 
boy leaves his father's house to go on a 
long journey on foot, to visit his uncle; he 
has to cross a wild hill-desert; just as if one 
of your own boys had to cross the wolds of 
Westmoreland, to visit an uncle at Carlisle. 
The second or third day your boy finds 
himself somewhere between Hawes and 
Brougli, in the midst of the moors, at sun- 
set. It is stony ground, and boggy; he 
cannot o'o one foot farther that niorht. 

o o 

Down he lies, to sleep, on Wharnside, 
where best he ma}', gathering a few of the 
stones together to put under his head; — so 
wild the place is, he cannot get anything 
but stones. And there, lying imder the 
broad night, he has a dream; and he sees 
a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of 
it reaches to heaven, and the angels of God 



Traffic. 

are ascending and descending upon it. And 
when he wakes out of his sleep, he says, 
"How dreadful is this place; surely, this is 
none other than the house of God, and this 
is the gate of heaven." This place, ob- 
serve; not this church; not this city; not 
this stone, even, which he puts up for a 
memorial — the piece of flint on which his 
head has lain. But this place; this windy 
slope of Wharnside; this moorland hollow, 
— torrent-bitten, snow-blighted; this any 
place where God lets down the ladder. 
And how are you to know where that will 
be? or how are you to determine where it 
may be, but by being ready for it always? 
Do you know where the lightning is to fall 
next? You do know that, partly; you can 
guide the lightning; but you cannot guide 
the going forth of the Spirit, which is that 
lightning when it shines from the east to 
the west. 

But the perpetual and insolent warping 
of that strong verse to serve a merely eccle- 
siastical purpose, is only one of the thou- 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

sand instances in wliicli we sink back into 
gross Judasini. We call our churches 
''temples." Now^, you know, or ought to 
know, they are not temples. They have 
never had, never can have, anything what- 
ever to do with temples. They are "syna- 
gogues " — " gathering places ' ' — where }'0U 
gather yourselves together as an assembly; 
and by not calling them so, you again miss 
the force of another mighty text: "Thou, 
when thou prayest, shalt not be as the 
hypocrites are; for they love to pray stand- 
ing in the cJiurcJics^^ [we should translate 
it], "that they may be seen of men. But 
thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy 
closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, 
l^ray to thy Father," — which is, not in 
chancel nor in aisle, but "in secret." 

Now, you feel, as I say this to you — I 
know you feel — as if I were trying to take 
away the honor of your churches. Not 
so ; I am trying to prove to you the honor 
of your houses and your hills; I am trying 
to show you — not that the Church is not 



Traffic. 

sacred — but that the whole Earth is. I 
would have you feel what careless, what 
constant, what infectious sin there is in all 
modes of thought, whereby, in calling your 
churches only "holy," you call your 
hearths and homes profane, and have sepa- 
rated yourselves from the heathen by cast- 
ing all your household gods to the ground, 
instead of recognizing, in the place of their 
many and feeble Lares, the presence of 
your One and Mighty Lord and Lar. 

"But what has all this to do with our 
Exchange?" you ask me, impatiently. 
]My dear friends, it has just everything to 
do with it; on these inner and great ques- 
tions depend all the outer and little ones; 
and if you have asked me down here to 
speak to you, because you had before been 
interested in anything I have written, you 
must know that all I have yet said about 
architecture was to show this. The book 
I called "The Seven Lamps" was to show 
that certain right states of temper and 
moral feeling were the magic powers by 
8 113 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

which all good architecture, without excep- 
tion, had been produced. "The Stones of 
Venice" had, from beg-inniuf^ to end, no 
other aim than to show that the Gothic 
architecture of Venice had arisen out of, 
and indicated in all its features, a state of 
pure national faith, and of domestic virtue; 
and that its Renaissance architecture had 
arisen out of, and in all its features indi- 
cated, a state of concealed national infi- 
delity, and of domestic corruption. And 
now you ask me what style is best to build 
in; and how can I answer, knowing the 
meaning of the two styles, but by another 
question — Do you mean to build as Chris- 
tians or as Infidels? And still more — Do 
you mean to build as honest Christians or 
as honest Infidels? as thoroughly and con- 
fessedly either one or the other? You 
don't like to be asked such rude questions. 
I cannot help it ; they are of much more 
importance than this Exchange business; 
and if they can be at once answered, the 
Exchange business settles itself in a mo- 

114 



Traffic. 

meiit. But, before I press tliein farther, I 
must ask leave to explain one point clearly. 
In all my past work, my endeavor has 
been to show that good architecture is 
essentially religious— the production of a 
faithful and virtuous, not of an infidel and 
corrupted people. But in the course of 
doing this, I have had also to show that 
good architecture is not ecclesiastical. 
People are so apt to look upon religion as 
the business of the clergy, not their own, 
that the moment they hear of anything 
depending on "religion," they think it 
must also have depended on the priesthood; 
and I have had to take what place was to 
be occupied between these two errors, and 
fight both, often with seeming contradic- 
tion. Good architecture is the work of 
good and believing men; therefore, you 
say, — at least some people say, — '*Good 
architecture must essentially have been 
the work of the clergy, not of the laity." 
No — a thousand times no; good archi- 
tecture has always been the work of the 
115 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

commonalty, — not of the clerg\-. What, 
you say, those glorious cathedrals — the 
pride of Europe — did their builders not 
form Gothic architecture? No; they cor- 
rupted Gothic architecture. Gothic was 
formed in the baron's castle, and the 
burgher's street. It was formed by the 
thoughts, and hands, and powers of free 
citizens and soldier kings. By the monk 
it was used as an instrument for the aid of 
his superstition ; when that superstition 
became a beautiful madness, and the best 
hearts of Europe vainly dreamed and pined 
in the cloister, and vainly raged and per- 
ished in the crusade — through that fury of 
perverted faith and wasted war, the Gothic 
rose also to its loveliest, most fantastic, 
and, finally, most foolish dreams ; and, in 
those dreams, was lost. 

I hope, now, that there is no risk of your 
misunderstanding me when I come to the 
gist of what I want to say to-night — when 
I repeat, that every great national archi- 
tecture has been the result and exponent of 

ii6 



Traffic. 

a srreat national relio^ion. You can't have 
bits of it here, bits there — you must have 
it everywhere or nowhere. It is not 
the monopoly of a clerical company — it is 
not the exponent of a theological dogma — 
it is not the hieroglyphic writing of an ini- 
tiated priesthood; it is the manly language 
of a people inspired by resolute and com- 
mon purpose, and rendering resolute and 
common fidelity to the legible laws of an 
undoubted God. 

Now, there have as yet been three dis- 
tinct schools of European architecture. I 
say European, because Asiatic and African 
architectures belong so entirely to other 
races and climates, that there is no question 
of them here; only, in passing, I will sim- 
ply assure you that whatever is good or 
great in Egypt, and Syria, and India, is 
just good or great for the same reasons 
as the buildings on our side of the Bos- 
phorus. 

We Europeans, then, have had three great 
religions : the Greek, which was the wor- 
117 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

ship of the God of Wisdom and Power; the 
Mediaeval, which was the Worship of the 
God of Judgment and Consolation; the 
Renaissance, which was the worship of the 
God of Pride and Beauty; these three we 
have had — they are past, — and now, at 
last, we English have got a fourth religion, 
and a God of our own, about which I want 
to ask you. But I must explain these 
three old ones first. 

I repeat, first, the Greeks essentially 
worshipped the God of Wisdom; so that 
whatever contended against their religion, 
— to the Jews a stumbling block — was, to 
the Greeks — Foolishness. 

The first Greek idea of Deity was that 
expressed in the word, of which we keep 
the remnant in our words "/^/-urnal " and 
"Z)/-vine'' — the god of Day^ Jupiter the 
reveal er. Athena is his daughter, but espe- 
cially daughter of the Intellect, springing 
armed from the head. We are only with 
the help of recent investigation beginning 
to penetrate the depth of meaning couched 



Traffic. 

under the Atlienaic symbols; but I may 
note rapidly, that her aegis, the mantle 
with the serpent fringes, in which she often, 
m the best statues, is represented as fold- 
ing up her left hand for better guard, and 
the Gorgon on her shield, are both repre- 
sentative mainly of the chilling horror and 
sadness (turning men to stone, as it were,) 
of the outmost and superficial spheres of 
knowledge — that knowledge which sepa- 
rates, in bitterness, hardness, and sorrow, 
the heart of the full-grown man from the 
heart of the child. For out of imperfect 
knowledge spring terror, dissension, dan- 
ger, and disdain; but from perfect knowl- 
edge, given by the full-revealed Athena, 
strength and peace, in sign of which she 
is crowned with the olive spray, and bears 
the resistless spear. 

This, then, was the Greek conception of 
purest Deity, and every habit of life, and 
every form of his art developed themselves 
from the seeking this bright, serene, resist- 
less wisdom ; and setting himself, as a man, 

Iiq 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

to do things evermore rightly and strongly ; * 
not with any ardent afFection or ultimate 
hope; but with a resolute and continent 
energy of will, as knowing that for failure 
there was no consolation, and for sin there 
was no remission. And the Greek archi- 
tecture rose unerring, bright, clearl>' de- 
fined, and self-contained. 

Next followed in Europe the great Chris- 
tian faith, which was essentially the relig- 
ion of Comfort. Its great doctrine is the 
remission of sins; for which cause it hap- 
pens, too often, in certain phases of Chris- 

* It is an error to suppose that the Greek worship, 
or seeking, was chiefly of Beauty. It was essentially 
of Rightness and Strength, founded on Forethought : 
the principal character of Greek art is not Beauty, but 
Design: and the Dorian Apollo-worship and Athen- 
ian Virgin-worship are both expressions of adoration 
of divine Wisdom and Purity. Next to these great 
deities rank, in power over the national mind, Dio- 
nysius and Ceres, the givers of human strength and 
life: then, for heroic example, Hercules. There is 
no Venus-worship among the Greeks in the great 
times : and the Muses are essentially teachers of 
Truth, and of its harmonies. 
1 20 



Traffic. 

tianity, that sin and sickness themselves 
are partly glorified, as if, the more you had 
to be healed of, the more divine was the 
healing. The practical result of this doc- 
trine, in art, is a continual contemplation 
of sin and disease, and of imaginary states 
of purification from them; thus we have an 
architecture conceived in a mingled senti- 
ment of melancholy and aspiration, partly 
severe, partly luxuriant, which will bend 
itself to every one of our needs, and every 
one of our fancies, and be strong or weak 
with us, as we are strong or weak ourselves. 
It is, of all architecture, the basest, when 
base people build it — of all, the noblest, 
when built by the noble. 

And now note that both these religions — 
Greek and Mediaeval — perished by false- 
hood in their own main purpose. The 
Greek religion of Wisdom perished in a 
false philosophy — " Oppositions of science, 
falsely so called." The Mediaeval religion 
of Consolation perished in false comfort; 
in remission of sins given lyingly. It was 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

the selling of absolution that ended the 
Mediaeval faith; and I can tell you more, 
it is the sellino^ of absolution which, to the 
end of time, will mark false Christianity. 
Pure Christianity gives her remission of 
sins only by ending them; but false Chris- 
tianity gets her remission of sins by com- 
pounding for them. And there are many 
ways of compounding for them. We Eng- 
lish have beautiful little quiet ways of 
buying absolution, whether in low Church 
or liigli, far more cunning than any of 
Tetzel's trading. 

Then, thirdly, there followed the religion 
of Pleasure, in which all Europe gave itself 
to luxury, ending in death. F'irst, bah 
■masques in every saloon, and then guillo- 
tines in every square. And all these three 
worships issue in vast temple building. 
Your Greek worshipped Wisdom, and built 
you the Parthenon — the Virgin's temple. 
The Mediaeval worshipped Consolation, 
and built you Virgin temples also — but to 
our Lady of Salvation. Then the Revival- 



Traffic. 

ist worshipped beauty, of a sort, and built 
you Versailles, and the Vatican. Now, 
lastly, will you tell me what we worship, 
and what we build? 

You know we are speaking always of the 
real, active, continual, national worship; 
that by which men act while they live; not 
that which they talk of when they die. 
Now, we have, indeed, a nominal religion, 
to which we pay tithes of property and 
sevenths of time; but we have also a prac- 
tical and earnest religion, to which we 
devote nine-tenths of our property and 
sixth-sevenths of our time. And we dis- 
pute a great deal about the nominal reli- 
gion; but we are all unanimous about this 
practical one, of which I think you will 
admit that the ruling goddess may be best 
generally described as the "Goddess of 
Getting-on, " or " Britannia of the Market. " 
The Athenians had an "Athena Agoraia," 
or Minerva of the Market; but she was a 
subordinate type of their goddess, while 
our Britannia Agoraia is the principal type 
123 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

of ours. And all your great architectural 
works are, of course, built to her. It is 
long since you built a great cathedral; and 
how you would laugh at me, if I proposed 
building a cathedral on the top of one of 
these hills of yours, taking it for an Acro- 
polis! But your railroad mounds, pro- 
longed masses of Acropolis; your railroad 
stations, vaster than the Parthenon, and 
innumerable; 3'our chimneys, how much 
more mighty and costly than cathedral 
spires! your harbor-piers; your warehouses; 
your exchanges! — all these are built to your 
great Goddess of ' ' Getting-on ; ' ' and she 
has formed, and will continue to form, 
your architecture, as long as you worship 
her; and it is quite vain to ask me to tell 
you how to build to Jicr ; you know far 
better than I. 

There might, indeed, on some theories, 
be a conceivably good architecture for Ex- 
changes — that is to say, if there Avere any 
heroism in the fact or deed of exchange, 
which might be typically carved on the 
124 



Traffic. 

outside of your buildiug. For, you know, 
all beautiful architecture must be adorned 
with sculpture or painting; and for sculp- 
ture or painting, you must have a subject. 
And hitherto it has been a received opinion 
among the nations of the world that the 
only right subjects for either, were heroisms 
of some sort. Even on his pots and his 
flagons, the Greek put a Hercules slaying 
lions, or an Apollo slaying serpents, or 
Bacchus slaying melancholy giants and 
earth-born despondencies. On his temples, 
the Greek put contests of great warriors 
in founding states, or of gods with evil 
spirits. 'On his houses and temples alike, 
the Christian put carvings of angels con- 
quering devils; or of hero-martyrs exchang- 
ing this world for another; subject inappro- 
priate, I think, to our manner of exchange 
here. And the Master of Christians not 
only left His followers without any orders 
as to the sculpture of affairs of exchange 
on the outside of buildings, but gave some 
strong evidence of His dislike of affairs of 
125 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

exchange within them. And yet there 
might surely be a heroism in such affairs; 
and all commerce become a kind of selling 
of doves, not impious. The wonder has 
always been great to me, that heroism has 
never been supposed to be in anywise con- 
sistent with the practice of supplying 
people with food, or clothes; but rather 
with that of quartering oneself upon them 
for food, and stripping them of their clothes. 
Spoiling of armor is an heroic deed in all 
ages; but the selling of clothes, old or new, 
has never taken any color of magnanimity. 
Yet one does not see why feeding the hun- 
gry and clothing the naked should ever 
become base businesses, even when engaged 
in on a large scale. If one could contrive 
to attach the notion of conquest to them 
anyhow? so that supposing there were 
anywhere an obstinate race, who refused 
to be comforted, one might take some pride 
in giving them compulsory comfort; and, 
as it were, "occupying a country" with 
one's gifts, instead of one's armies? If 
126 



Traffic. 

one could only consider it as much a vic- 
tory to get a barren field sown, as to get 
an eared field stripped; and contend who 
should build villages, instead of who 
should ''carry" them. Are not all forms 
of heroism conceivable in doing these 
serviceable deeds ? You doubt who is 
strongest ? It might be ascertained by 
push of spade, as well as push of sword. 
Who is wisest ? There are witty things to 
be thought of in planning other business 
than campaigns. Who is bravest ? There 
are always the elements to fight with 
stronger than men; and nearly as merci- 
less. The only absolutely and unapproach- 
ably heroic element in the soldier's work 
seems to be — that he is paid little for it — and 
regularly; while you traffickers, and ex- 
changers, and others occupied in presum- 
ably benevolent business, like to be paid 
much for it — and by chance. I never can 
make out how it is that a knight-errant 
does not expect to be paid for his trouble, 
but a peddler-errant always does, — that 

127 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 



people are willing to take hard knocks for 
nothing, but never to sell ribbons cheap, 
— that they are ready to go on fervent 
crusades to recover the tomb of a buried 
God, never on any travels to fulfill the or- 
ders of a living God, — that they will go 
anywhere barefoot to preach their faith, 
but must be well bribed to practice it, and 
are perfectly ready to give the Gospel 
«:ratis, but never the loaves and fishes. If 
you choose to take the matter up on any 
such soldierly principle, to do your com- 
merce, and your feeding of nations, for 
fixed salaries; and to be as particular about 
giving people the best food, and the best 
cloth, as soldiers are about giving them the 
best gunpowder, I could carve something 
for you on your Exchange worth looking 
at. But I can only at present suggest 
decorating its frieze with pendant purses, 
and making its pillars broad at the base for 
the sticking of bills. And in the inner- 
most chamber of it there might be a statue 
of Britannia of the Market, who may have, 
128 



Traffic. 

perhaps advisably, a partridge for her crest, 
typical at once of her courage in fighting 
for noble ideas; and of her interest in 
game; and round its neck the inscription 
in golden letters, "Perdix fovit quae non 
peperit." * Then, for her spear, she might 
have a weaver's beam; and on her shield, 
instead of her Cross, the Milanese boar, 
semi-fleeced, with the town of Gennesaret 
proper, in the field and the legend, ' ' In the 
best market," and her corslet, of leather, 
folded over her heart in the shape of a 
purse, with thirty slits in it for a piece of 
money to go in at, on each day of the 
month. And I doubt not but that people 
would come to see your Exchange, and its 
goddess, with applause. 

Nevertheless, I want to point out to you 
certain strange characters in this goddess 

*Jerem. xvii. ii (best in Septuagint and Vulgate). 
*'As the partridge, fostering what she brought not 
forth, so he that getteth riches, not by right, shall 
leave them in the midst of his days, and at his end 
shall be a fool." 

9 129 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

of }'oiirs. She differs from the great Greek 
and Mediaeval deities essentially in two 
things, — first, as to the continuance of her 
presumed power; secondly, as to the ex- 
tent of it. 

ist, as to the Continuance. 

The Greek Goddess of Wisdom gave con- 
tinual increase of wisdom, as the Christian 
Spirit of Comfort (or Comforter) continual 
increase of comfort. There was no ques- 
tion, with these, of any limit or cessation 
of function. But with your Agora God- 
dess, that is just the most important ques- 
tion. Getting on — but where to? Gather- 
ing together — but how much? Do you 
mean to gather always — never to spend? 
If so, I wish you joy of your goddess, for I 
am just as well off as you, without the 
trouble of worshipping her at all. But if 
you do not spend, somebody else will — 
somebody else must. And it is because of 
this (among many other such errors) that 
I have fearlessly declared your so-called 
science of Political Economy to be no 
130 



Traffic. 

science; because, namely, it has omitted 
the study of exactly the most important 
branch of the business — the study of spend 
mg. For spend you must, and as much as 
you make, ultimately. You gather corn: 
will you bury England under a heap of 
grain; or will you, when you have gath- 
ered, finally eat? You gather gold: — will 
you make your house-roofs of it, or pave 
your streets with it? That is still one way 
of spending it. But if you keep it, that 
you may get more, I'll give you more; I'll 
give you all the gold you want — all you 
can imagine — if you can tell me what 
you' 11 do with it. You shall have thousands 
of gold pieces; — thousands of thousands — 
millions — mountains, of gold: where will 
you keep them ? Will you put an Olympus 
of silver upon a golden Pelion — make Ossa 
like a wart? Do you think the rain and 
dew would then come down to you, in 
the streams from such mountains, more 
blessedly than they will down the moun- 
tains which God has made for you, of moss 
131 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

and whinstone? But it is not gold that 
you want to gather! What is it? Green- 
backs? No; not those neither. What is 
it then — is it ciphers after a capital I? 
Cannot you practice writing ciphers, and 
write as many as you want? Write ciphers 
for an hour every morning, in a big book, 
and say every evening, I am worth all those 
noughts more than I was yesterday. Won't 
that do? Well, what in the name of Plutus 
is it you want? Not gold, not greenbacks, 
not ciphers after a capital I? You will 
have to answer, after all, ''No; we want, 
somehow or other, money's worth.'*^ Well, 
what is that? Let your Goddess of Get- 
ting-on discover it, and let her learn to 
stay therein. 

II. But there is yet another question to 
be asked respecting this Goddess of Get- 
ting-on. The first was of the continuance 
of her power; the second is of its extent. 

Pallas and the Madonna were supposed 
to be all the world's Pallas, and all the 
world's Madonna. They could teach all 
132 



Traffic. 

men, and they could comfort all men. 
But, look strictly into the nature of the 
power of your Goddess of Getting-on; and 
you will find she is the Goddess — not of 
everybody's getting-on — but only of some- 
body's getting-on. This is a vital, or rather 
deathful, distinction. Examine it in your 
own ideal of the state of national life which 
this Goddess is to evoke and maintain. I 
asked you what it was, when I was last 
here ; * — you have never told me. Now, 
shall I try to tell you ? 

Your ideal of human life then is, I think, 
that it should be passed in a pleasant un- 
dulating world, with iron and coal every- 
where underneath it. On each pleasant 
bank of this world is to be a beautiful 
mansion, with two wings; and stables, and 
coach-houses; a moderately sized park; a 
large garden and hot-houses; and pleasant 
carriage drives through the shrubberies. 
In this mansion are to live the favored 
votaries of the Goddess; the English gen- 

•• Two Paths, p. 98. 

133 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 



tleman, with his gracious wife, and his 
beautiful family; always able to have the 
boudoir and the jewels for the wife, and the 
beautiful ball dresses for the daughters, 
and hunters for the sons, and a shooting in 
the Highlands for himself. At the bottom 
of the bank, is to be the mill; not less 
than a quarter of a mile long, with a steam 
engine at each end, and two in the middle, 
and a chimney three hundred feet high. 
In this mill are to be in constant employ- 
ment from eight hundred to a thousand 
workers, who never drink, never strike, 
always go to church on Sunday, and always 
express themselves in respectful language. 
Is not that, broadly, and in the main 
features, the kind of thing you propose to 
yourselves? It is very pretty indeed, seen 
from above ; not at all so pretty, seen from 
below. For, observe, while to one family 
this deity is indeed the Goddess of Getting- 
on, to a thousand families she is the God- 
dess oi not Getting-on. "Nay," you say, 
*'they have all their chance." Yes, so 
134 



Traffic. 

has every one in a lottery, but there must 
always be the same number of blanks. 
^'Ah! but in a lottery it is not skill and 
intelligence which take the lead, but blind 
chance." What then? Do you think the 
old practice, that ' ' they should take who 
have the power, and they should keep who 
can," is less iniquitous, when the power 
has become power of brains instead of fist? 
and that, though we may not take advan- 
tage of a child's or a woman's weakness, 
we may of a man's foolishness? "Nay, 
but finally, work must be done, and some 
one must be at the top, some one at the 
bottom." Granted, my friends. Work 
must always be, and captains of work must 
always be; and if you in the least remem- 
ber the tone of any of my writings, you 
must know that they are thought unfit for 
this age, because they are always insisting 
on need of government, and speaking with 
scorn of liberty. But I beg you to observe 
that there is a wide difference between 
being captains or governors of work, and 
135 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 



taking the profits of it. It does not follow, 
because }0U are general of an army, that 
you are to take all the treasure, or land, it 
wins (if it fight for treasure or land); 
neither, because you are king of a nation, 
that you are to consume all the profits of 
the nation's work. Real kings, on the 
contrary, are known invariably by their 
doing quite the reverse of this, — by their 
taking the least possible quantity of the 
nation's work for themselves. There is no 
test of real kinghood so infallible as that. 
Does the crowned creature live simply, 
bravely, unostentatiously? Probably he is 
a King. Does he cover his body with 
jewels, and his table with delicates? In all 
probability he is no^ a King. It is possible 
he may be, as Solomon was; but that is 
when the nation shares his splendor with 
him. Solomon made gold, not only to be 
in his own palace as stones, but to be in 
Jerusalem as stones. But even so, for the 
most part, these splendid kinghoods expire 
in ruin, and only the true kinghoods live> 
I -.6 



Traffic. 

which are of royal laborers governing loyal 
laborers; who, both leading rough lives, 
establish the true dynasties. Conclusively 
you will find that because you are king of 
a nation, it does not follow that you are to 
gather for yourself all the wealth of that 
nation; neither, because you are king of a 
small i^art of the nation, and lord over the 
means of its maintenance — over field, or 
mill, or mine — are you to take all the pro- 
duce of that piece of the foundation of 
national existence for yourself. 

You will tell me I need not preach 
against these things, for I cannot mend 
them. No, good friends, I cannot; but 
you can, and you will; or something else 
can and will. Do you think these pheno- 
mena are to stay always in their present 
power or aspect? All history shows, on 
the contrary, that to be the exact thing 
they never can do. Change 77ittst come; 
but it is ours to determine whether change 
of growth, or change of death. Shall the 
Parthenon be in ruins on its rock, and 
137 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 



Bolton priory in its meadow, but these 
mills of yours be the consummation of the 
buildings of the earth, and their wheels be 
as the wheels of eternity ? Think you that 
^'men may come, and men may go," but 
— mills — go on forever? Not so; out of 
these, better or worse shall come; and it is 
for you to choose which. 

I know that none of this wrong is done 
with deliberate purpose. I know, on the 
contrary, that you wish your workmen 
well; that you do much for them, and that 
you desire to do more for them, if you saw 
your way to it safely. I know that many 
of you have don^, and are every day doing, 
whatever you feel to be in your power; 
and that even all this wrong and misery 
are brought about by a warped sense of 
duty, each of you striving to do his best, 
without noticing that this best is essen- 
tially and centrally the best for himself, 
not for others. And all this has come of the 
spreading of that thrice-accursed, thrice- 
impious doctrine of the modern economist, 
13S 



Traffic. 

that "To do the best for yourself is finally 
to do the best for others." Friends, oiir 
great Master said not so; and most abso- 
lutely we shall find this world is not made 
so. Indeed, to do the best for others, is 
finally to do the best for ourselves; but it 
will not do to have our eyes fixed on that 
issue. The Pagans had got beyond that. 
Hear what a Pagan says of this matter; 
hear what were, perhaps, the last written 
words of Plato, — if not the last actually 
written (for this we cannot know), yet 
assuredly in fact and power his parting 
words — in which, endeavoring to give full 
crowning and harmonious close to all his 
thoughts, and to speak the sum of them by 
the imagined sentence of the Great Spirit, 
his strength and his heart fail him, and the 
words cease, broken off for ever. It is the 
close of the dialogue called "Critias," in 
which he describes, partly from real tradi- 
tion, partly in ideal dream, the early state 
of Athens; and the genesis, and order, and 
religion, of the fabled isle of Atlantis; in 
139 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 



M^iicli genesis lie conceives the same first 
perfection and final degeneracy of man, 
which in our own Scriptural tradition is 
expressed by saying that the Sons of God 
intermarried with the daughters of men, 
for he supposes the earliest race to have 
been indeed the children of God; and to 
have corrupted themselves, until "their 
spot was not the spot of his children." 
And this, he says, was the end; that 
indeed "through many generations, so 
long as the God's nature in them yet was 
full, they were submissive to the sacred 
laws, and carried themselves lovingly to 
all that had kindred with them in diviiie- 
ness; for their uttermost spirit was faithful 
and true, and in every wise great; so that, 
in all meekness of wisdom, they dealt with 
each other, and took all the chances of 
life; and, despising all things except vir- 
tue, they cared little what happened day 
by day, and bore lightly the biirde^i of gold 
and of possessions ; for they saw that, if 
only their common love and virtue in- 
140 



Traffic. 

creased, all these things would be in- 
creased together with them; but to set 
their esteem and ardent pursuit upon ma- 
terial possession would be to lose that first, 
and their virtue and affection together with 
it. And by such reasoning, and what of 
the divine nature remained in them, they 
gained all this greatness of which we have 
already told; but when the God's part of 
them faded and became extinct, being 
mixed again and again, and effaced by the 
prevalent mortality; and the human na- 
ture at last exceeded, they then became 
unable to endure the courses of fortune, 
and fell into shapelessness of life, and base- 
ness in the sight of him who could see, 
having lost everything that was fairest of 
their honor ; while to the blind hearts 
which could not discern the true life, tend- 
ing to happiness, it seemed that they were 
then chiefly noble and happy, being filled 
with all iniquity of inordinate possession 
and power. Whereupon the God of Gods, 
whose Kinghood is in laws, beholding a 
141 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

once jnst nation thus cast into misery, and 
desiring to lay such punishment upon them 
as might make them repent into restrain- 
ing, gathered together all the gods into his 
dwelling-place, which from heaven's cen- 
tre overlooks whatever has part in crea- 
tion ; and having assembled them, he 

said " 

The rest is silence. So ended are the 
last words of the chief wisdom of the 
heathen, spoken of this idol of riches; this 
idol of yours; this golden image high by 
measureless cubits, set up where your green 
fields of England are furnace-burnt into 
the likeness of the plain of Dura: this idol, 
forbidden to us, first of all idols, by our 
own ]\Iaster and faith; forbidden to us also 
by every human lip that has ever, in any 
age or people, been accounted of as able to 
speak according to the purposes of God. 
Continue to make that forbidden deity 
your principal one, and soon no more art, 
no more science, no more pleasure will be 
possible. Catastrophe will come ; or worse 

142 



Traffic. 

than catastrophe, slow mouldering and 
withering into Hades. But if you can fix 
some conception of a true human state of 
life to be striven for — life for all men as 
for yourselves — if you can determine some 
honest and simple order of existence ; fol- 
lowing those trodden ways of Wisdom, 
which are pleasantness, and seeking her 
quiet and withdrawn paths, which are 
peace, — then, and so sanctifying wealth 
into "commonwealth," all your art, your 
literature, your daily labors, your domestic 
affection, and citizen's duty, will join and 
increase into one magnificent harmony. 
You will know then how to build, well 
enough; you will build with stone well, 
but with flesh better; temples not made 
with hands, but riveted with hearts; and 
that kind of marble, crimson-veined, is 
indeed eternal. 



143 



LECTURE III 



WAR. 



lo 145 



LECTURE III. 

WAR. 

(Delivered at the Royal Military Academy, 
Woolwich.) 

yOUNG soldiers, I do not doubt but that 
many of you came unwillingly to- 
night, and many in merely contemptuous 
curiosity, to hear what a writer on painting 
could possibly say, or would venture to 
say, respecting your great art of war. You 
may well think within yourselves, that a 
painter might, perhaps without immodesty, 
lecture younger painters upon painting, 
but not young lawyers upon law, nor 
young physicians upon medicine — least of 
all, it may seem to you, young warriors 
upon war. And, indeed, when I was asked 
to address you, I declined at first, and de- 
clined long; for I felt that you would not 
be interested in my special business, and 
M7 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

would certainly think there was small need 
for nie to come to teach you yours. Nay, 
I knew that there ou^ht to be no such 
need, for the great veteran soldiers of Eng- 
land are now men every way so thought- 
ful, so noble, and so good, that no other 
teaching than their knightly example, and 
their few words of grave and tried counsel 
should be either necessary for you, or even, 
without assurance of due modesty in the 
offerer, endured by you. 

But being asked, not once nor twice, I 
have not ventured persistently to refuse; 
and I will try, in very few words, to lay 
before you some reason why you should 
accept my excuse, and hear me patiently. 
You may imagine that your work is wholly 
foreign to, and separate from, mine. So far 
from that, all the pure and noble arts of 
peace are founded on war; no great art 
ever yet rose on earth, but among a nation 
of soldiers. There is no art among a shep- 
herd people, if it remains at peace. There 
is no art among an agricultural people, 
148 



War. 

if it remains at peace. Commerce is barely 
consistent with fine art, but cannot pro- 
duce it. Manufacture not only is unable 
to produce it, but invariably destroys 
whatever seeds of it exist. There is no 
great art possible to a nation but that 
which is based on battle. 

Now, though I hope you love fighting 
for its own sake, you must, I imagine, be 
surprised at my assertion that there is any 
such good fruit of fighting. You sup- 
posed, probably, that your office was to 
defend the works of peace, but certainly 
not to found them: nay, the common 
course of war, you may have thought, was 
only to destroy them. And truly, I who 
tell you this of the use of war, should 
have been the last of men to tell you so, 
had I trusted my own experience only. 
Hear why: I have given a considerable 
part of my life to the investigation of 
Venetian painting, and the result of that 
inquiry was my fixing upon one man as 
the greatest of all Venetians, and there- 
149 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

fore, as I believed, of all painters whatso- 
ever. I formed this faith (whether right 
or wrong matters at present nothing), in 
the snpremacy of the painter Tintoret, 
under a roof covered with his pictures; and 
of those pictures, three of the noblest were 
then in the form of shreds of ragged can- 
vas, mixed up with the laths of the roof, 
rent through by three Austrian shells. 
Now, it is not every lecturer who could 
tell you that he had seen three of his 
favorite pictures torn to rags by bomb- 
shells. And after such a sight, it is not 
every lecturer who ivould tell you that, 
nevertheless, war was the foundation of all 
great art. 

Yet the conclusion is inevitable, from 
any careful comparison of the states of 
great historic races at different periods. 
Merely to show you what I mean, I will 
sketch for you, very briefly, the broad 
steps of the advance of the best art of the 
world. The first dawn of it is in K^ypt; 
and the power of it is founded on the per- 
150 



War. 

pettial contemplation of death, and of 
future judgment, by the mind of a nation 
of which the ruling caste were priests, and 
the second, soldiers. The greatest works 
l^roduced by them are sculptures of their 
kings going out to battle, or receiving the 
homage of conquered armies. And you 
must remember, also, as one of the great 
keys to the splendor of the Egyptian 
nation, that the priests were not occupied 
in theology only. Their theology was the 
basis of practical government and law, so 
that they were not so much priests as re- 
ligious judges, the office of Samuel, among 
the Jews, being as nearly as possible cor- 
respondent to theirs. 

All the rudiments of art then, and much 
more than the rudiments of all science, 
are laid first by this great warrior-nation, 
which held in contempt all mechanical 
trades, and in absolute hatred the peaceful 
life of shepherds. From Egypt art passes 
directly into Greece, where all poetry and 
all painting are nothing else than the de- 
151 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

script ion, praise, or dramatic representa 
tion of war, or of the exercises which 
prepare for it, in their connection with 
offices of religion. All Greek institutions 
had first respect to war; and their concep- 
tion of it, as one necessary office of all 
human and divine life, is expressed simply 
by the images of their guiding gods. 
Apollo is the god of all wisdom of the 
intellect; he bears the arrow and the bow, 
before he bears the lyre, x^gain, Athena 
is the goddess of all wisdom in conduct. 
It is by the helmet and the shield, oftener 
than by the shuttle, that she is distin- 
guished from other deities. 

There were, however, two great differ- 
ences in principle between the Greek and 
the Egyptian theories of policy. In Greece 
there was no soldier caste; every citizen 
was necessarily a soldier. And, again, 
while the Greeks rightly despised mechani- 
cal arts as much as the Egyptians, they 
did not make the fatal mistake of despising 
agricultural and pastoral life, but perfectly 
152 



War. 

honored both. These two conditions of 
truer thought raise them quite into the 
highest rank of wise manhood that has yet 
been reached; for all our great arts, and 
nearly all our great thoughts, have been 
borrowed or derived from them. Take awa}' 
from us what they have given, and I hardly 
can imagine how low the modern European 
would stand. 

Now, you are to remember, in passing 
to the next phase of history, that though 
you must have war to produce art — you 
must also have much more than war; 
namely, an art-instinct or genius in the 
people; and that, though all the talent for 
painting in the world won't make painters 
of you, unless you have a gift for fighting 
as well, you may have the gift for fighting, 
and none for painting. Now, in the next 
great dynasty of soldiers, the art-instinct 
is wholly wanting. I have not yet inves- 
tigated the Roman character enough to 
tell you the causes of this; but I believe, 
paradoxical as it may seem to you, that^ 
153 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

however truly the Roman might say of 
himself that he was born of Mars, and 
suckled by the wolf, he was nevertheless, 
at heart, more of a farmer than a soldier. 
The exercises of war were with him prac- 
tical, not poetical; his poetry was in do- 
mestic life only, and the object of battle, 
^'Pacis imponere morem." And the arts 
are extinguished in his hands, and do not 
rise again, until, with Gothic chivalry, 
there comes back into the mind of Europe 
a passionate delight in war itself, for the 
sake of war. And then, with the romantic 
knighthood which can imagine no other 
noble employment, — under the fighting 
kings of France, England, and Spain; and 
under the fighting dukeships and citizen- 
ships of Italy, art is born again, and rises 
to her height in the great valleys of Lom- 
bardy and Tuscany, through which there 
flows not a single stream, from all their 
Alps or Apennines, that did not once run 
dark red from battle: and it reaches its 
culminating glory in the city which gave 
154 



War. 

to history the most intense type of soldier- 
ship yet seen among men, — the city whose 
armies were led in their assault by their 
king, led through it to victory by their 
king, and so led, though that king of 
theirs was blind, and in the extremity of 
his age. 

And from this time forward, as peace is 
established or extended in Burope, the arts 
decline. They reach an unparalleled pitch 
of costliness, but lose their life, enlist them- 
selves at last on the side of luxury and vari- 
ous corruption, and, among wholl}' tran- 
quil nations, wither utterly away; remain- 
ing only in partial practice among races 
who, like the French and us, have still the 
minds, though we cannot all live the lives, 
of soldiers. 

' ' It may be so, " I can suppose that a 
philanthropist might exclaim. "Perish 
then the arts, if they can flourish only at 
such a cost. What worth is there in toys 
of canvas and stone, if compared to the 
joy and peace of artless domestic life?" 
155 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 



And the answer is — truly, in themselves, 
none. But as expressions of the highest 
state of the human sj^irit, their worth is 
infinite. As results they may be worthless, 
but, as signs, they are above price. For it 
is an assured truth that, whenever the 
faculties of men are at their fullness, they 
must express themselves by art; and to say 
that a state is without such expression, is 
to say that it is sunk from its proper level 
of manly nature. So that, when I tell }0U 
that war is the foundation of all the arts, I 
mean also that it is the foundation of all 
the high virtues and faculties of men. 

It was very strange to me to discover 
this, and very dreadful — but I saw it to be 
quite an imdeniable fact. The common 
notion that peace and the virtues of civil 
life flourished together, I found to be wholly 
untenable. Peace and the vices of civil 
life only flourish together. We talk of peace 
and learning, and of peace and plenty, and 
of peace and civilization; but I found that 
those were not the words which the Muse 
156 



War. 

of History coupled together; that on her 
lips, the words were — peace and sensuality, 
peace and selfishness, peace and corruption, 
peace and death. I found, in brief, that all 
great nations learned their truth of word, 
and strength of thought, in war; that they 
were nourished in war, and wasted by 
peace; taught by war, and deceived by 
peace; trained by war, and betrayed by 
peace; — in a word, that they were born in 
war and expired in peace. 

Yet now note carefully, in the second- 
place, it is not all war of which this can 
be said — nor all dragon's teeth, which, 
sown, will start up into men. It is not the 
ravage of a barbarian wolf-flock, as under 
Genseric or Suwarrow; nor the habitual 
restlessness and rapine of mountaineers, as 
on the old borders of Scotland; nor the 
occasional struggle of a strong peaceful 
nation for its life, as in the wars of the 
Swiss with Austria; nor the contest of 
merely ambitious nations for extent of 
power, as in the wars of France under 

1.57 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

Napoleon, or the just terminated war in 
America. None of these forms of war 
build anything but tombs. But the crea- 
tive or foundational war is that in which 
the natural restlessness and love of contest 
among men are disciplined, by consent, 
into modes of beautiful — though it may be 
fatal — play: in which the natural ambition 
and love of power of men are disciplined 
into the aggressive conquest of surrounding 
evil: and in which the natural instincts of 
self-defence are sanctified by the nobleness 
of the institutions, and purity of the house- 
holds, which they are appointed to defend. 
To such war as this all men are born ; in 
such war as this any man may happily die; 
and forth from such war as this have arisen 
throughout the extent of past ages, all the 
highest sanctities and virtues of humanity. 

I shall therefore divide the war of which 
I would speak to you into three heads. War 
for exercise or play; war for dominion; 
and, war for defence. 

I. And first, of v/ar for exercise or play. 
158 



War. 

I speak of it primarily in this light, because, 
through all past history, manly war has 
been more an exercise than anything else, 
among the classes who cause and proclaim 
it. It is not a game to the conscript, or 
the pressed sailor; but neither of these are 
the causers of it. To the governor who 
determines that war shall be, and to the 
youths who voluntarily adopt it as their 
profession, it has always been a grand 
pastime, and chiefly pursued because they 
had nothing else to do. And this is true 
without any exception. No king whose 
mind was fully occupied with the develop- 
ment of the inner resources of his king- 
dom, or with any other sufficing subject of 
thought, ever entered into war but on com- 
pulsion. No youth who was earnestly busy 
with any peaceful subject of study, or set 
on any serviceable course of action, ever 
voluntarily became a soldier. Occupy him 
early, and wisely, in agriculture or business, 
in science or in literature, and he will never 
think of war otherwise than as a calamity, 
159 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

But leave him idle; and, the more brave 
and active and capable he is by nature, the 
more he will thirst for some appointed field 
for action; and find, in the passion and 
peril of battle, the only satisfying fulfill- 
ment of his unoccupied being. And from 
the earliest incipient civilization imtil now, 
the population of the earth divides itself, 
when you look at it widely, into two races; 
one of workers, and the other of players 
— one tilling the ground, manufacturing, 
building, and otherwise providing for the 
necessities of life, — the other part proudly 
idle, and continually, therefore, needing 
recreation, in which they use the produc- 
tive and laborious orders partly as their cat- 
tle, and partly as their puppets or pieces 
in the game of death. 

Now, remember, whatever virtue or good- 
liness there may be in this game of war, 
rightly played, there is none when you 
thus play it with a multitude of small 
human pawns. 

If you, the gentlemen of this or any other 
1 60 



War. 

kingdom, choose to make your pastime of 
contest, do so, and welcome; but set not 
up these unhappy peasant-pieces upon the 
green fielded board. If the wager is to be 
of death, lay it on your own heads, not 
theirs. A goodly struggle in the Olympic 
dust, though it be the dust of the grave, 
the gods will look upon, and be with you 
in; but they will not be with you, if you 
sit on the sides of the amphitheatre, whose 
steps are the mountains of earth, whose 
arena its valleys, to urge your peasant 
millions into gladiatorial war. You also, 
you tender and delicate women, for whom, 
and by whose command, all true battle has 
been, and must ever be; you would per- 
haps shrink now, though you need not, 
from the thought of sitting as queens above 
set lists where the jousting game might be 
mortal. How much more, then, ought you 
to shrink from the thought of sitting above 
a theatre pit in which even a few con- 
demned slaves were slaying each other 
only for your delight! And do you not 

II i6i 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

shrink from the fact of sitting above a 
theatre pit, where, — not condemned slaves, 
— but the best and bravest of the poor sons 
of your people, slay each other, — not man 
to man, — as the coupled gladiators, but 
race to race, in duel of generations? You 
would tell me, perhaps, that you do not sit 
to see this; and it is indeed true, that the 
women of Europe — those who have no 
heart-interest of their own at peril in the 
contest — draw the curtains of their boxes, 
and muffle the openings; so that from the 
pit of the circus of slaughter there may 
reach them only at intervals a half-heard 
cry and a murmur as of the wind's sigh- 
ing, when myriads of souls expire. They 
shut out the death-cries; and are happy, 
and talk wittily among themselves. That 
is the utter literal fact of what our ladies 
do in their pleasant lives. 

Nay, you might answer, speaking for 

them — "We do not let these wars come to 

pass for our play, nor by our carelessness; 

we cannot help them. How can a.ny final 

162 



War. 

quarrel of nations be settled otherwise than 
by war ? " I cannot now delay, to tell you 
how political quarrels might be otherwise 
settled. But grant that they cannot. 
Grant that no law of reason can be under- 
stood by nations ; no law of justice sub- 
mitted to by them; and that, while ques- 
tions of a few acres and of petty cash, can 
be determined by truth and equity, the 
questions which are to issue in the perish- 
ing or saving of kingdoms can be deter- 
mined only by the truth of the sword, and 
the equity of the rifle. Grant this, and 
even then, judge if it will always be neces- 
sary for you to put your quarrel into the 
hearts of your poor, and sign your treaties 
with peasants' blood. You would be 
ashamed to do this in your own private 
position and power. Why should you not 
be ashamed also to do it in public place 
and power? If you quarrel with your 
neighbor, and the quarrel be indetermina- 
ble by law, and mortal, you and he do not 
send your footmen to Battersea fields to 
163 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

fight it out ; nor do you set fire to his ten- 
ants' cottages, nor sjDoil their goods. You 
fight out your quarrel yourselves, and at 
your own danger, if at all. And you do 
not think it materially affects the arbitra- 
ment that one of you has a larger house- 
hold than the other ; so that, if the serv- 
ants or tenants were brought into the field 
with their masters, the issue of the contest 
could not be doubtful ? You either refuse 
the private duel, or you practice it under 
laws of honor, not of physical force; that 
so it may be, in a manner, justly con- 
cluded. Now the just or unjust conclu- 
sion of the private feud is of little moment, 
while the just or unjust conclusion of the 
public feud is of eternal moment: and yet, 
in this public quarrel, you take }'our serv- 
ants' sons from their arms to fight for it, 
and your servants' food from their lips to 
support it; and the black seals on the 
parchment of )'our treaties of peace are the 
deserted hearth and the fruitless field. 
There is a ghastly ludicrousness in this, 
164 



War. 

as there is mostly in these wide and uni- 
versal crimes. Hear the statement of the 
very fact of it in the most literal words of 
the greatest of our English thinkers: — 

' ' What, speaking in quite unofficial language, is the 
net-purport and upshot of war ? To my own know- 
ledge, for example, there dwell and toil, in the Brit- 
ish village of Dumdrudge, usually some five hundred 
souls. From these, by certain ' natural enemies ' of 
the French, there are successively selected, during 
the French war, say thirty able-bodied men. Dum- 
drudge, at her own expense, has suckled and nursed 
them ; she has, not without difficulty and sorrow, fed 
them up to manhood, and even trained them to 
crafts, so that one can weave, another build, another 
hammer, and the weakest can stand under thirty 
stone avoirdupois. Nevertheless, amid much weep- 
ing and swearing, they are selected ; all dressed in 
red; and shipped away, at the public charges, some 
two thousand miles, or say only to the south of 
Spain ; and fed there till wanted. 

" And now to that same spot in the south of Spain 
are thirty similar French artisans, from a French 
Dumdrudge, in like manner wending ; till at length, 
after infinite effort, the two parties come into actual 
juxtaposition ; and Thirty stands fronting Thirty, 
each with a gun in his hand. 

" Straightway the word ' Fire ! ' is given, and they 
165 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

blow the souls out of one another, and in place of 
sixty brisk useful craftsmen, the world has sixty 
dead carcasses, which it must bury, and anon shed 
tears for. Had these men any quarrel ? Busy as the 
devil is, not the smallest! They lived far enough apart; 
were the entirest strangers; nay, in so wide a uni- 
verse, there was even, unconsciously, by commerce, 
some mutual helpfulness between them. How then ? 
Simpleton ! their governors had fallen out ; and 
instead of shooting one another, had the cunning to 
make these poor blockheads shoot." — {Sartor Re- 
sarius.) 

Positively, then, gentlemen, the game 
of battle must not, and shall not, ulti- 
mately be played this way. But should it 
be played any way ? Should it, if not by 
your servants, be practiced by yourselves ? 
I think, yes. Both history and human in- 
stinct seem alike to say, yes. All healthy 
men like fighting, and like the sense of 
danger; all brave women like to hear of 
their fighting, and of their facing danger. 
This is a fixed instinct in the fine race of 
them; and I cannot help fancying that fair 
fight is the best play for them ; and that a 
tournament was a better game than a 
i66 



War. 

steeple-chase. The time may perhaps 
come, in France as well as here, for uni- 
versal hurdle-races and cricketing; but I 
do not think universal "crickets" will 
bring out the best qualities of the nobles 
of either country. I use, in such question, 
the test which I have adopted, of the con- 
nection of war with other arts; and I reflect 
how, as a sculptor, I should feel, if I were 
asked to design a monument for a dead 
knight, in Westminster Abbey, with a 
carving of a bat at one end, and a ball at 
the other. It may be the remains in me 
only of savage Gothic prejudice; but I had 
rather carve it with a shield at one end, 
and a sword at the other. And this, ob- 
serve, with no reference whatever to any 
story of duty done, or cause defended. 
Assume the knight merely to have ridden 
out occasionally to fight his neighbor for 
exercise; assume him even a soldier of 
fortune, and to have gained his bread, and 
filled his purse at the sword's point. Still, 
I feel as if it were, somehow, grander and 
167 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

worthier in him to have made his bread 
b)' sword play than any other play ; I had 
rather he had made it by thrusting than 
by batting-; — much more, than by betting. 
]\Iuch rather that he should ride war horses, 
than back race horses; and — I say it sternly 
and deliberately — much rather would I 
have him slay his neighbor, than cheat 
him. 

But, remember, so far as this may be 
true, the game of war is only that in which 
the full personal power of the hiimait 
creature is brought out in management of 
its w^eapons. And this for three reasons: — 

First, the great justification of this game 
is that it truly, when well played, deter- 
mines zvJio is the best nian^ — who is the 
highest bred, the most self-denying, the 
most fearless, the coolest of nerve, the 
swiftest of eye and hand. You cannot 
test these qualities wholly, unless there is 
a clear possibility of the struggle's ending 
in death. It is only in the fronting of that 
condition that the full trial of the man, 
168 



War. 

soul and body, comes out. You may go 
to your game of wickets, or of hurdles, or 
of cards, and any knavery that is in you 
may stay unchallenged all the while. But 
if the play may be ended at any moment 
by a lance-thrust, a man will probably 
make up his accounts a little before he 
enters it. Whatever is rotten and evil in 
him will weaken his hand more in holding 
a sword-hilt, than in balancing a billiard- 
cue; and, on the whole, the habit of living 
lightly-hearted, in daily presence of death, 
always has had, and must have, a tendency 
both to the making and testing of honest 
men. But for the final testing, observe, 
you must make the issue of battle strictly 
dependent on fineness of frame, and firm- 
ness of hand. You must not make it the 
question, which of the combatants has the 
longest gun, or which has got behind the 
biggest tree, or which has the wind in his 
face, or which has gunpowder made by the 
best chemists, or iron smelted with the best 
coal, or the angriest mob at his back. 
169 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 



Decide your battle, whether of nations, or 
individuals, on tJiose terms, — and you have 
only multiplied confusion, and added 
slaughter to iniquity. But decide your 
battle by pure trial which has the strongest 
arm, and steadiest heart, — and you have 
gone far to decide a great many matters 
besides, and to decide them rightly. 

And the other reasons for this mode of 
decision of cause, are the diminution both 
of the material destructiveness or cost, and 
of the physical distress of war. For you 
must not think that in speaking to you in 
this (as you may imagine) fantastic praise 
of battle, I have overlooked the conditions 
weighing against me. I pray all of you, 
who have not read, to read with the most 
earnest attention Mr. Helps' s two essays 
on War and Government, in the first vol- 
ume of the last series of ''Friends in 
Council." Everything that can be urged 
against war is there simply, exhaustively, 
and most graphically stated. And all, 
there urged, is true. But the tw^o great 
170 



War. 

counts of evil alleged against war by that 
most thoughtful writer, hold only against 
modern war. If you have to take away 
masses of men from all industrial employ- 
ment, to feed them by the labor of others, 
to move them and provide them with de- 
structive machines, varied daily in national 
rivalship of inventive cost; if you have to 
ravage the country which you attack, — to 
destroy for a score of future years its roads, 
its woods, its cities, and its harbors, — and 
if, finally, having brought masses of men, 
counted by hundreds of thousands, face to 
face, you tear those masses to pieces with 
jagged shot, and leave the fragments of 
living creatures, countlessly beyond all 
help of surgery, to starve and parch, 
through days of torture, down into clots of 
clay, — what book of accounts vshall record 
the cost of your work, — what book of 
judgment sentence the guilt of it ? 

That, I say, is modem war, — scientific 
war, — chemical and mechanic war, worse 
even than the savage's poisoned arrow. 

171 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

And yet you will tell me, perhaps, that 
any other war than this is impossible now. 
It may be so; the progress of science can- 
not, perhaps, be otherwise registered than 
by new facilities of destruction; and the 
brotherly love of our enlarging Christianity 
be only proved by multiplication of mur- 
der. Yet hear, for a moment, what war 
was in Pagan and ignorant days, — what 
war might yet be, if we could extinguish 
our science in darkness, and join the 
heathen's practice to the Christian's theory. 
I read you this from a book which proba- 
bly most of you know well, and all ought 
to know — Muller's "Dorians," — but I 
have put the points I wish you to remem- 
ber in closer connection than in his text. 

"The chief characteristic of the war- 
riors of Sparta was great composure and 
subdued strength; the violence (Xuoaa) of 
Aristodemus and Isadas being considered 
as deserving rather of blame than praise; 
and these qualities in general distinguished 
the Greeks from the northern Barbarians, 



War. 

whose boldness always consisted in noise 
and tumult. For the same reason the 
Spartans sacrificed to the Muses before an 
action, these goddesses being expected to 
produce regularity and order in battle; -as 
they sacrificed on the same occasion in 
Crete to the god of love^ as the confirmer 
of mutual esteem and shame. Every man 
put on a crown, when the band of flute- 
players gave the signal for attack; all the 
shields of the line ^flittered with their liiorh 
polish, and mingled their splendor with 
the dark-red of the purple mantles, which 
were meant both to adorn the combatant, 
and to conceal the blood of the wounded; 
to fall well and decorously being an incen- 
tive the more to the most heroic valor. 
The conduct of the Spartans in battle de- 
notes a high and noble disposition, which 
rejected all the extremes of brutal rage. 
The pursuit of the enemy ceased when the 
victory was completed; and after the signal 
for retreat had been given, all hostilities 
ceased. The spoiling of arms, at least 
173 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

during the battle, was also interdicted; and 
the consecration of the spoils of slain ene- 
mies to the gods, as, in general, all rejoic- 
ings for victory, were considered as ill- 
omened.'^ 

Such was the war of the greatest soldiers 
who prayed to heathen gods. What Chris- 
tian war is preached by Christian ministers, 
let any one tell you, who saw the sacred 
crowning, and heard the sacred flute-play- 
ing, and was inspired and sanctified by the 
divinely-measured and musical language, 
of any North American regiment prepar- 
ing for its charge. And what is the rela- 
tive cost of life in pagan and Christian 
wars, let this one fact tell you: — the Spar- 
tans won the decisive battle of Corinth 
with the loss of eight men; the victors at 
indecisive Gettysburg confess to the loss of 
30,000. 

II. I pass now to our second order of 
war, the commonest among men, that un- 
dertaken in desire of dominion. And let 
me ask you to think for a few moments 
174 



War. 

what the real meaning of this desire of 
dominion is — first in the minds of kings — 
then in that of nations. 

Now, mind you this first, — that I speak 
either about kings, or masses of men, with 
a fixed conviction that human nature is a 
noble and beautiful thing; not a foul nor a 
base thing. All the sin of men I esteem 
as their disease, not their nature; as a folly 
which may be prevented, not a necessity 
which must be accepted. And my wonder, 
even when things are at their worst, is 
always at the height which this human 
nature can attain. Thinking it high, I find 
it always a higher thing than I thought it; 
while those who think it low, find it, and 
will find it, always lower than they thought 
it: the fact being, that it is infinite, and 
capable of infinite height and infinite fall; 
but the nature of it — and here is the faith 
which I would have you hold with me — 
the nature of it is in the nobleness, not in 
the catastrophe. 

Take the faith in its utmost terms- 
175 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 



When the captain of the "London" vshook 
hands with his mate, saying, "God speed 
you! I will go down with iny passengers," 
that I believe to be "human nature." He 
does not do it from any religious motive — 
from any hope of reward, or any fear of 
punishment; he does it because he is a 
man. But when a mother, living among 
the fair fields of merry England, gives her 
two-year-old child to be suffocated under a 
mattress in her inner room, while the said 
mother waits and talks outside; tJiat I be- 
lieve to be not human nature. You have 
the two extremes there, shortly. And you, 
men, and, mothers, who are here face to 
face with me to-night, I call upon }ou to 
say which of these is human, and which 
inhuman — which "natural;" and which 
" unnatural ? " Choose your creed at once, 
I beseech you:— choose it with unshaken 
choice — choose it forever. Will you take, 
for foundation of act and hope, the faith 
that this man w^as such as God made him, 
or that this woman was such as God made 
176 



War. 

lier? Which of them has failed from their 
nature — from their present, possible, actual 
nature; — not their nature of long ago, but 
their nature of now? Which has betrayed 
it — falsified it? Did the guardian who 
died in his trust, die inhumanly, and as a 
fool; and did the murderess of her child 
fulfill the law of her being? Choose, I 
say; infinitude of choices hang upon this. 
You have had false prophets among you — 
for centuries you have had them — solemnly 
warned against them though you were ; 
false prophets, who have told you that all 
men are nothing but fiends or wolves, half 
beast, half devil. Believe that, and indeed 
you may sink to that. But refuse that, 
and have faith that God "made you up- 
right," thongh yoz^ have sought out many 
inventions; so, you will strive daily to 
become more what your Maker meant and 
means )'ou to be, and daily gives you 
also the power to be — and you will cling 
more and more to the nobleness and vir- 
tue that is in you, saying, "My right- 
12 177 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

eousness I hold fast, and will not let it 

go." 

I have put this to you as a choice, as if 
you might hold either of these creeds you 
liked best. But there is in reality no 
choice for you; the facts being quite easily 
ascertainable. You have no business to 
think about this matter, or to choose in it. 
The broad fact is, that a human creature 
of the highest race, and most perfect as a 
human thing, is invariably both kind and 
true; and that as you lower the race, you 
get cruelty and falseness, as you get de- 
formity; and this so steadily and assuredly, 
that the two great words which, in their 
first use, meant only perfection of race, 
have come, by consequence of the invaria- 
ble connection of virtue with the fine 
human nature, both to signify benevolence 
of disposition. The word generous, and 
the word gentle, both, in their origin, 
meant only "of pure race," but because 
charity and tenderness are inseparable from 
this putity of blood, the words which once 
178 



War. 

stood only for pride, now stand as syno- 
nyms for virtue. 

Now, this being the true power of our 
inherent humanity, and seeing that all the 
aim of education should be to develop this, 
— and seeing also what magnificent self- 
sacrifice the higher classes of men are capa- 
ble of, for any cause that they understand 
or feel, — it is wholly inconceivable to me 
how well-educated princes, who ought to 
be of all gentlemen the gentlest, and of all 
nobles the most generous, and whose title 
of royalty means only their function of 
doing every man "r/^/^/" — how these, I 
say, throughout history, should so rarely 
pronounce themselves on the side of the 
poor and of justice, but continually main- 
tain themselves and their own interests by 
oppression of the poor, and by wresting of 
justice; and how this should be accepted 
as so natural, that the word loyalty, which 
means faithfulness to law, is used as if it 
were only the duty of a people to be loyal 
to their king, and not the duty of a king 
179 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

to be infinitely more loyal to his people. 
How comes it to pass that a captain will 
die with his passengers, and lean over the 
g unwale to give the parting boat its course ; 
but that a king will not usually die with, 
much less ycT, his passengers, — thinks it 
rather incumbent on his passengers, in any 
number, to die for Jiim? Think, I beseech 
you, of the wonder of this. The sea captain, 
not captain by divine right, but only by com- 
pany' s appointment; — not a man of royal 
descent, but only a plebeian who can steer; — 
not with the eyes of the world upon him, but 
with feeble chance, depending on one poor 
boat, of his name being ever heard above 
the wash of the fatal weaves; — not with the 
cause of a nation resting on his act, but 
helpless to save so much as a child from 
among the lost crowd with whom he re- 
solves to be lost, — yet goes down quietly 
to his grave, rather than break his faith to 
these few emigrants. But your captain 
by divine right, — your captain with the 
hues of a hundred shields of kings upon 
i8o 



War. 

his breast, — your captain whose every 
■deed, brave or base, will be illuminated or 
branded forever before unescapable eyes of 
men, — your captain whose every thought 
and act are beneficent, or fatal, from sun- 
rising to setting, blessing as the sunshine, 
or shadowing as the night, — this captain, 
as you find him in history, for the most 
part, thinks only how he may tax his pas- 
sengers, and sit at most ease in his state 
cabin ! 

For observe, if there had been indeed in 
the hearts of the rulers of great multitudes 
of men any such conception of work for 
the good of those under their command, 
as there is in the good and thoughtful 
masters of any small company of men, not 
only wars for the sake of mere increase of 
power could never take place, but our idea 
of power itself would be entirely altered. 
Do you suppose that to think and act even 
for a million of men, to hear their com- 
plaints, watch their weaknesses, restrain 
their vices, make laws for them, lead them, 
i8i 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 



day by day, to purer life, is not enough for 
one man's work? If any of us were abso- 
lute lord only of a district of a hundred 
miles square, and were resolved on doing- 
our utmost for it, making it feed as large 
a number of people as possible; making 
every clod productive, and every rock de- 
fensive, and every human being happy; 
should we not have enough on our hands, 
think you ? But if the ruler has any other 
aim than this; if, careless of the result of 
his interference, he desire only the author- 
ity to interfere; and, regardless of what is 
ill-done or well-done, cares only that it 
shall be done at his bidding; — if he would 
rather do two hundred miles' space of mis- 
chief, than one hundred miles' space of 
good, of course he will try to add to his 
territory; and to add inimitably. But does 
he add to his power? Do you call it 
power in a child, if he is allowed to play 
with the wheels and bands of some vast 
engine, pleased with their murmur and 
whirl, till his unwise touch, wandering 
182 



War. 

where it ought not, scatters beam and 
wheel into ruin ? Yet what machine is so 
vast, so incognizable, as the working of 
the mind of a nation; what child's touch 
so wanton, as the word of a selfish king ? 
And yet, how long have we allowed the 
historian to speak of the extent of the 
calamity a man causes, as a just ground for 
his pride, and to extol him as the greatest 
prince, who is only the centre of the widest 
error! Follow out this thought by your- 
selves; and you will find that all power, 
properly so called, is wise and benevolent. 
There may be capacity in a drifting fire- 
ship to destroy a fleet; there may be venom 
enough in a dead body to infect a nation: 
— but which of you, the most ambitious, 
would desire a drifting kinghood, robed in 
consuming fire, or a poison-dipped sceptre 
whose touch was mortal? There is no 
true potency, remember, but that of help; 
nor true ambition, but ambition to save. 

And then, observe farther, this true 
power, the power of saving, depends 
183 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

— \ 

neither on nuiltitude of men, nor on ex- 
tent of territory. We are continually as- 
suming that nations become strong accord- 
ing- to their numbers. They indeed be- 
come so, if those numbers can be made of 
one mind; but how are you sure you can 
stay them in one mind, and keep them 
from having north and south minds ? 
Grant them unanimous, liow^ know you 
they will be unanimous in right ? If they 
are unanimous in wrong, the more they 
are, essentially the weaker they are. Or, 
suppose that they can neither be of one 
mind, nor of two minds, but can onh' be 
of 710 mind? Suppose they are a mere 
helpless mob; tottering into precipitant 
catastrophe, like a wagon load of stones 
when the wheel comes off. Dangerous 
enough for their neighbors, certainly, but 
not "powerful." 

Neither does strength depend on extent 

of territory, any more than upon number 

of population. Take up your maps when 

you go home this evening, — put the clus- 

184 



War. 

ter of British Isles beside the mass of 
South America; and then consider whether 
any race of men need care how much 
ground they stand upon. The strength 
is in the men, and in their unity and vir- 
tue, not in their standing room: a little 
group of wise hearts is better than a wil- 
derness full of fools; and only that nation 
gains true territory, which gains itself. 

And now for the brief practical outcome 
of all this. Remember, no government is 
ultimately strong, but in proportion to its 
kindness and justice; and that a nation 
does not strengthen, by merely multiply- 
ing and diffusing itself. We have not 
strengthened as yet, by multiplying into 
America. Nay, even when it has not to 
encounter the separating conditions of emi- 
gration, a nation need not boast itself of 
multiplying on its own ground, if it multi- 
plies only as flies or locusts do, with the 
god of flies for its god. It multiplies its 
strength only by increasing as one great 
family, in perfect fellowship and brother- 
185 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 



hood. And, lastly, it does not strengthen 
itself by seizing dominion over races whom 
it cannot benefit. Anstria is not strength- 
ened, but weakened, b\' her grasp of lyoni- 
bardy; and whatever apparent increase of 
majesty and of wealth may have accrued to 
us from the possession of India, whether 
these prove to us ultimately power or 
weakness, depends wholly on the degree 
in which our influence on the native race 
shall be benevolent and exalting. But, as 
it is at their own peril that any race ex- 
tends their dominion in mere desire of 
power, so it is at their own still greater 
peril that the)- refuse to undertake aggres- 
sive war, according to their force, when- 
ever they are assured that their authority 
would be helpful and protective. Nor 
need you listen to any sophistical objection 
of the impossibility of knoW'ing when a 
people's help is needed, or when not. ]\Iake 
your national conscience clean, and your 
national eyes \vill soon be clear. No man 
who is truly ready to take part in a noble 
i86 



War. 

quaiTel will ever stand long in doubt by 
whom, or in what cause, his aid is needed. 
I hold it my duty to make no political 
statement of any special bearing in this 
presence; but I tell you broadly and bold- 
ly, that, within these last ten years, we 
English have, as a knightly nation, lost 
our spurs: we have fought where we should 
not have fought, for gain; and we have 
been passive where we should not have 
been passive, for fear. I tell you that 
the principle of non-intervention, as now 
preached among us, is as selfish and cruel 
as the worst frenzy of conquest, and differs 
from it only by being not only malignant, 
but dastardly. 

I know, however, that my opinions on 
this subject differ too widely from those 
ordinarily held, to be any farther intruded 
upon you; and therefore I pass lastly to 
examine the conditions of the third kind 
of noble war; — war waged simply for de- 
fence of the country in which we were 
born, and for the maintenance and execu- 
1S7 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

tion of her laws, by whomsoever threat- 
ened or defied. It is to this duty that I 
suppose most men, entering the army, 
consider themselves in reality to be bound, 
and I want you now to reflect what the 
laws of mere defence are; and what the 
soldier's duty, as now understood, or sup- 
posed to be understood. You have sol- 
emnly devoted yourselves to be English 
soldiers, for the guardianship of England. 
I want you to feel what this vow of yours 
indeed means, or is gradually coming to 
mean. You take it upon you, first, while 
you are sentimental school-boys; you go 
into your military convent, or barracks, 
just as a girl goes into her convent while 
she is a sentimental school-girl ; neither of 
you then know what you are about, though 
both the good soldiers and the good nuns 
make the best of it afterwards. You don't 
understand perhaps why I call you "senti- 
mental'- school-boys, when you go into the 
army? Because, on the whole, it is love 
of adventure, of excitement, of fine dress 

i88 



War. 

and of the pride of fame, all of which are 
sentimental motives, which chiefly made a 
boy like going into the Guards better than 
into a counting-house. You fancy, per- 
haps, that there is a severe sense of duty 
mixed with these peacocky motives ? And 
in the best of you, there is ; but do not 
think that it is principal. If you cared to 
do your duty to your country in a prosaic 
and unsentimental wa}^, depend upon it, 
there is now truer duty to be done in rais- 
ing harvests, than in burning them ; more 
in building houses, than in shelling them 
— more in winning money by your own 
work, wherewith to help men, than in tax- 
ing other people's work, for money where- 
with to sla}^ men; more duty, finally, in 
honest and unselfish living than in honest 
and unselfish dying, though that seems to 
your boys' eyes the bravest. So far, then, 
as for your own honor, and the honor of 
your families, you choose brave death in a 
red coat before brave life in a black one, 
you are sentimental ; and now see what 
189 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

this passionate vow of yours comes to. 
For a little w^iile you ride, and you hunt 
tigers or savages, you shoot, and are shot; 
\ou are happy, and proud, always, and 
honored and wept if you die; and you are 
satisfied with your life, and with the end 
of it ; believing, on the whole, that good 
rather than harm of it comes to others, and 
much pleasure to you. But as the sense 
of duty enters into your forming minds, 
the vow takes another aspect. You find 
that }'ou have put yourselves into the hand 
of your country as a weapon. You have 
vowed to strike when she bids you, and to 
stay scabbarded when she bids you ; all 
that you need answer for is, that you fail 
not in her grasp. And there is goodness 
in this, and greatness, if you can trust the 
hand and heart of the Britomart who has 
braced you to her side, and are assured 
that when she leaves you sheathed in dark- 
ness, there is no need for your flash to the 
sun. But remember, good and noble as 
this state may be, it is a state of slavery. 
190 



War. 

There are different kinds of slaves and dif- 
ferent masters. Some slaves are scourged 
to their work by whips, others are scourged 
to it by restlessness or ambition. It does 
not matter what the whip is; it is none the 
less a whip, because you have cut thongs 
for it out of your own souls: the fact, so far, 
of slavery, is in being driven to your work 
without thought, at another's bidding. 
Again, some slaves are bought with mone}-, 
and others with praise. It matters not 
what the purchase money is. The dis- 
tinguishing sign of slavery is to have a 
price, and be bought for it. Again, it 
matters not what kind of work you are set 
on; some slaves are set to forced diggings, 
others to forced marches; some dig fur- 
rows, others field-works, and others graves. 
Some press the juice of reeds, and some the 
juice of vines, and some the blood of men. 
The fact of the captivity is the same what- 
ever work we are set upon, though the 
fruits of the toil may be different. But, 
remember, in thus vowing ourselves to be 
191 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 



the slaves of any master, it ought to be 
some subject of forethought with us, what 
work he is likely to put us upon. You 
may think that the whole duty of a sol- 
dier is to be passive, that it is the country 
you have left behind who is to command, 
and vou have only to obey. But are you 
sure that you have left all your country 
behind, or that the part of it you have so 
left is indeed the best part of it ? Suppose 
— and, remember, it is quite conceivable — 
that you yourselves are indeed the best 
part of England; that you, who have be- 
come the slaves, ought to have been the 
masters ; and that those who are the mas- 
ters ought to have been the slaves ! If it 
is a noble and whole-hearted England, 
whose bidding you are bound to do, it is 
well; but if you are yourselves the best of 
her heart, and the England you have left 
be but a half-hearted England, how say 
you of your obedience? You were too 
proud to become shopkeepers : are >ou 
satisfied then to become the servants of 
192 



War. 

shopkeepers ? You were too proud to be- 
come mercliants or fanners yourselves : 
will you have merchants or farmers then 
for your field-marshals ? You had no gifts 
of special grace for Exeter Hall: will you 
have some gifted person thereat for your 
commander-in-chief, to judge of your 
work, and reward it? You imagine your- 
selves to be the army of England: how if 
you should find yourselves, at last, only 
the police of her manufacturing towns, and 
the beadles of her little Bethels ? 

It is not so yet, nor will be so, I trust, 
forever; but what I want you to see, and 
to be assured of, is, that the ideal of soldier- 
ship is not mere passi\-e obedience and 
bravery; that, so far from this, no country 
is in a healthy state which has separated, 
even in a small degree, her civil from her 
military power. All states of the world, 
however great, fall at once when they use 
mercenary armies; and although it is a less 
instant form of error (because involving no 
national taint of cowardice), it is yet an 
13 193 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

error no less ultimately fatal — it is the 
error especially of modern times, of which 
we cannot yet know all the calamitous con- 
sequences — to take away the best blood and 
strength of the nation, all the soul-sub- 
stance of it that is brave, and careless of 
reward, and scornful of pain, and faithful 
in trust; and to cast that into steel, and 
make a mere sword of it; taking away its 
voice and will ; but to keep the worst part 
of the nation — whatever is cowardly, avar- 
icious, sensual, and faithless — and to give 
to this the voice, to this the authority, to 
this the chief privilege, where there is 
least capacity, of thought. The fulfill- 
ment of your vow for the defence of Eng- 
land will by no means consist in carrying 
out such a system. You are not true sol- 
diers, if you only mean to stand at a shop 
door, to protect shop-boys who are cheat- 
ing inside. A soldier's vow to his country 
is that he will die for the guardianship of 
her domestic virtue, of her righteous laws, 
and of her anyway challenged or endan- 
194 



War. 

gered honor. A state without virtue, with- 
out laws, and without honor, he is bound 
not to defend ; nay, bound to redress by his 
own right hand that which he sees to be 
base in her. So sternly is this the law of 
Nature and life, that a nation once utterly 
corrupt can only be redeemed by a military 
despotism — never by talking, nor by its free 
effort. And the health of any state con- 
sists simply in this: that in it those who 
are wisest shall also be strongest ; its rulers 
should be also its soldiers; or, rather, by 
force of intellect more than of sword, its 
soldiers its rulers. Whatever the hold 
which the aristocracy of England has on 
the heart of England, in that they are still 
always in front of her battles, this hold 
will not be enough, unless they are also 
in front of her thoughts. And truly her 
thoughts need good captain's leading now, 
if ever! Do you know what, by this beau- 
tiful division of labor (her brave men fight- 
ing, and her cowards thinking), she has 
come at last to think? Here is a bit of 
195 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

paper in my hand, * a good one too, and an 
honest one ; quite representative of the best 
common public thought of England at this 
moment; and it is holding forth in one of 
its leaders upon our "social welfare," — 
upon our "vivid life," — upon the "politi- 
cal supremacy of Great Britain." And 
what do you think all these are owing to? 

* I do not care to refer to the journal quoted, be- 
cause the article was unworthy of its general tone, 
though in order to enable the audience to verify the 
quoted sentence, I left the number containing it on 
the table, when I delivered this lecture. But a say- 
ing of Baron Liebig's, quoted at the head of a leader 
on the same subject in the Daily Telegraph, of Jan- 
uary II, 1866, summarily digests and presents the 
maximum folly of modern thought in this respect. 
"Civilization," says the Baron, "is the conomy of 
power, and English power is coal." Not altogether 
so, my chemical friend. Civilization is the making of 
civil persons, which is a kind of distillation of which 
. alembics are incapable, and does not at all imply the 
turning of a small company of gentlemen into a 
large company of ironmongers. And English power 
(what little of it may be left) is by no means coal, 
but, indeed, of that which, "when the whole world 
turns to coal, then chiefly lives." 
196 



War. 

To wHat our English sires have done for 
us, and taught us, age after age? No; not 
to that. To our honesty of heart, or cool- 
ness of head, or steadiness of will? No; 
not to these. To our thinkers, or our states- 
men, or our poets, or our captains, or our 
martyrs, or the patient labor of our poor? 
No : not to these ; or at least not to these 
in any chief measure. Nay, says the jour- 
nal, "more than any agency, it is the 
cheapness and abundance of our coal which 
have made us what we are. " If it be so, 
then ^' ashes to ashes " be our epitaph! and 
the sooner the better. I tell you, gentle- 
men of England, if ever you would have 
your country breathe the pure breath of 
heaven again, and receive again a soul into 
her body, instead of rotting into a carcass, 
blown up in the belly with carbonic acid 
(and great that way), you must think, and 
feel, for your England, as well as fight for 
her: you must teach her that all the true 
greatness she ever had, or ever can have, 
she won while her fields were green and 
197 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

lier faces ruddy ; that greatness is still pos- 
sible for Englishmen, even though the 
ground be not hollow under their feet, nor 
the sky black over their heads; — and that, 
when the day comes for their country to 
lay her honors in the dust, her crest will not 
rise from it more loftily because it is dust 
of coal. Gentlemen, I tell you, solemnly, 
that the day is coming when the soldiers 
of England must be her tutors and the 
captains of her army, captains also of her 
mind. 

And now, remember, you soldier youths, 
who are thus in all ways the hope of your 
country; or must be, if she have any hope: 
remember that your fitness for all future 
trust depends upon what you are now. No 
good soldier in his old age was ever care- 
less or indolent in his youth. Many a 
giddy and thoughtless boy has become a 
good bishop, or a good law}^er, or a good 
merchant ; but no such an one ever became 
a good general. I challenge you, in all 
history, to find a record of a good soldier 
19S 



War. 

who was not grave and earnest in his 
youth. And, in general, I have no patience 
with people who talk about ' ' the thought- 
lessness of youth" indulgently. I had 
infinitely rather hear of thoughtless old 
age, and the indulgence due to that. 
When a man has done his work, and 
nothing can any way be materially altered 
in his fate, let him forget his toil, and jest 
with his fate, if he will; but what excuse 
can you find for wilfulness of thought, at 
the very time when every crisis of future 
fortune hangs on your decisions ? A youth 
thoughtless! when all the happiness of his 
home forever depends on the chances, or 
the passions, of an hour! A youth thought- 
less! when the career of all his days de- 
pends on the opportunity of a moment! A 
youth thoughtless! when his every act is a 
foundation-stone of future conduct, and 
every imagination a fountain of life or 
death! Be thoughtless in any after years, 
rather than now — though, indeed, there is 
only one place where a man may be nobly 
199 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

thouglitless, — his deathbed. No thinking- 
should ever be left to be done there. 

Having, then, resolved that you will not 
waste recklessly, but earnestly use, these 
early days of yours, remember that all the 
duties of her children to England may be 
summed in two words — industrv^ and 
honor. I say first, industry, for it is in 
this that soldier youth are especially 
tempted to fail. Yet, surely, there is no 
reason, because your life may possibly or 
probably be shorter than other men's, that 
you should therefore waste more recklessly 
the portion of it that is granted you; 
neither do the duties of your profession, 
which require you to keep your bodies 
strong, in any wise involve the keeping of 
your minds weak. So far from that, the 
experience, the hardship, and the activity 
of a soldier's life render his powers of 
thought more accurate than those of other 
men; and while, for others, all knowledge 
is often little more than a means of amuse- 
ment, there is no form of science which a 



War. 

soldier may not at some time or other find 
bearing on business of life and death. A 
young mathematician may be excused for 
languor in studying curves to be described 
only with a pencil; but not in tracing 
those which are to be described with a 
rocket. Your knowledge of a wholesome 
herb may involve the feeding of an army; 
and acquaintance with an obscure point of 
geography, the success of a campaign. 
Never waste an instant's time, therefore; 
the sin of idleness is a thousandfold greater 
in you than in other youths; for the fates 
of those who will one day be under your 
command hang upon your knowledge; 
lost moments now will be lost lives then, 
and every instant which you carelessly 
take for play, you buy with blood. But 
there is one way of wasting time, of all the 
vilest, because it wastes, not time only, 
but the interest and energy of your minds. 
Of all the ungentlemanly habits into 
which you can fall, the vilest is betting, 
or interesting yourselves in the issues of 

20I 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

betting. It unites nearly every condition 
of folly and vice; you concentrate your 
interest upon a matter of chance, instead 
of upon a subject of true knowledge ; and 
you back opinions which you have no 
grounds for forming, merely because they 
are your own. All the insolence of egotism 
is in this; and so far as the love of excite 
ment is complicated with the hope of win- 
ning money, you turn yourselves into the 
basest sort of tradesmen — those who live 
by speculation. Were there no other 
ground for industry, this would be a suffi- 
cient one; that it protected you from the 
temptation to so scandalous a vice. Work 
faithfully, and you will put yourselves in 
possession of a glorious and enlarging hap- 
piness; not such as can be won by the 
speed of a horse, or marred by the obliquity 
of a ball. 

First, then, by industry you must fulfill 
your vow to your country ; but all industry 
and earnestness will be useless unless they 
are consecrated by your resolution to be in 



War. 

all things men of honor; not honor in the 
common sense only, but in the highest. 
Rest on the force of the two main words 
in the great verse, integer vitae, scelerisque 
puriis. You have vowed your life to Eng- 
land; give it to her wholly — a bright, stain- 
less, perfect life — a knightly life. Because 
you have to fight with machines instead of 
lances, there may be a necessity for more 
ghastly danger, but there is none for less 
worthiness of character, than in olden time. 
You may be true knights yet, though per- 
haps not equites ; you may have to call 
yourselves " cannonry ' ' instead of " chi- 
valry," but that is no reason why you 
should not call yourselves true men. So 
the first thing you have to see to in becom- 
ing soldiers is that you make yourselves 
wholly true. Courage is a mere matter of 
course among any ordinarily well-born 
youths; but neither truth nor gentleness is 
matter of course. You must bind them 
like shields about your necks; you must 
write them on the tables of your hearts. 
203 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

Though it be not exacted of you, yet exact 
it of yourselves, this vow of stainless truth. 
Your hearts are, if you leave them un- 
stirred, as tombs in which a god lies buried. 
Vow yourselves crusaders to redeem that 
sacred sepulchre. And remember, before 
all things — for no other memory will be so 
protective of you — that the highest law of 
this knightly truth is that under which it 
is vowed to women. Whomsoever else you 
deceive, whomsoever you injure, whomso- 
ever you leave unaided, you must not de- 
ceive, nor injure, nor leave imaided, accord- 
ing to your power, any woman of whatever 
rank. Believe me, every virtue of the 
higher phases of manly character begins in 
this ; — in truth and modesty before the face 
of all maidens; in truth and pity, or truth 
and reverence to all womanhood. 

And now let me turn for a moment to 
you, — wives and maidens, who are the souls 
of soldiers; to you, — mothers, who have 
devoted your children to the great hier- 
archy of war. Let me ask you to consider 
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War. 

what part you have to take for the aid of 
those who love you; for if you fail in your 
part they cannot fulfill theirs; such absolute 
helpmates you are that no man can stand 
without that help, nor labor in his own 
strength. 

I know your hearts, and that the truth 
of them never fails when an hour of trial 
comes which you recognize for such. But 
you know not when the hour of trial first 
finds you, nor when it verily finds you. 
You imagine that you are only called upon 
to wait and to sufier; to surrender and to 
mourn. You know that you must not 
weaken the hearts of your husbands and 
lovers, even by the one fear of which those 
hearts are capable, — the fear of parting 
from you, or of causing you grief. Through 
weary years of separation, through fearful 
expectancies of unknown fate; through the 
tenfold bitterness of the sorrow which 
might so easily have been joy, and the ten- 
fold yearning for glorious life struck down 
in its prime — through all these agonies you 
205 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

fail not, and never will fail. But your 
trial is not in these. To be heroic in dan- 
ger is little; — you are Englishwomen. To 
be heroic in change and sway of fortune is 
little; — for do you not love? To be patient 
through the great chasm and pause of loss is 
little; — for do you not still love in heaven? 
But to be heroic in happiness; to bear 
yourselves gravely and righteously in the 
dazzling of the sunshine of morning; not 
to forget the God in whom you trust, when 
He gives you most; not to fail those who 
trust you, when they seem to need you 
least; this is the difficult fortitude. It is 
not in the pining of absence, not in the 
peril of battle, not in the wasting of sick- 
ness, that your prayer should be most pas- 
sionate, or your guardianship most tender. 
Pray, mothers and maidens, for your young 
soldiers in the bloom of their pride; pray for 
them, while the only dangers round them 
are in their own wayward wills; watch 
you, and pray, when they have to face, 
not death, but temptation. But it is this 
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War. 

fortitude also for which there is the crown- 
ing reward. Believe me, the whole course 
and character of your lovers' lives is in 
your hands; what you would have them 
be, they shall be, if you not only desire to 
have them so, but deserve to have them 
so; for they are but mirrors in which you 
will see yourselves imaged. If you are 
frivolous, they will be so also; if you have 
no understanding of the scope of their 
duty, they also will forget it; they will 
listen, — they can listen, — to no other inter- 
pretation of it than that uttered from your 
lips. Bid them be brave, — they will be 
brave for you; bid them be cowards; and 
how noble soever they be, they will quail 
for you. Bid them be wise, and they will 
be wise for you; mock at their counsel, 
they will be fools for you : such and so ab- 
solute is your rule over them. You fancy, 
perhaps, as you have been told so often, 
that a wife's rule should only be over her 
husband's house, not over his mind. Ah, 
no! the true rule is just the reverse of that; 
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The Crown of Wild Olive. 

a true wife, in her husband's house, is his 
servant; it is in his heart that she is queen. 
Whatever of the best he can conceive, it is 
her part to be; whatever of highest he can 
hope, it is hers to promise; all that is dark 
in him she must purge into purity; all that 
is failing in him she must strengthen into 
truth: from her, through all the world's 
clamor, he must win his praise; in her, 
through all the world's warfare, he must 
find his peace. 

And, now, but one word more. You 
may wonder, perhaps, that I have spoken 
all this night in praise of war. Yet, truly, 
if it might be, I, for one, would fain join 
in the cadence of hammer-strokes that 
should beat swords into ploughshares ; and 
that this cannot be, is not the fault of us 
men. It is yoitr fault. Wholly yours. 
Only by your command, or by your per- 
mission, can any contest take place among 
ns. And the real, final, reason for all the 
poverty, misery, and rage of battle, 
throughout Europe, is simply that you 
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War. 

women, however good, however religious, 
however self-sacrificing for those whom 
you love, are too selfish and too thought- 
less to take pains for any creature out of 
your own immediate circles. You fancy 
that you are sorry for the pain of others. 
Now, I just tell you this, that if the usual 
course of war, instead of unroofing peas- 
ants' houses, and ravaging peasants' fields, 
merely broke the china upon your own 
drawing-room tables, no war in civilized 
countries would last a week. I tell you 
more, that at whatever moment you chose 
to put a period to war, you could do it 
with less trouble than you take any day to 
go out to dinner. You know, or at least 
you might know, if you would think, that 
every battle you hear of has made many 
widows and orphans. We have, none of 
us, heart enough truly to mourn with 
these. But at least we might put on the 
outer symbols of mourning with them. 
Let but every Christian lady who has con- 
science toward God, vow that she will 
14 209 



The Crown of Wild Olive. 

mourn, at least outwardly, for His killed 
creatures. Your praying is useless, and 
your church-going mere mockery of God, 
if you have not plain obedience in you 
enough for this. I^et every lady in the 
upper classes of civilized Europe simply 
vow that, while any cruel war proceeds, 
she will wear blacky — a mute's black, — 
with no jewel, no ornament, no excuse 
for, or evasion into, prettiness. I tell you 
again, no war would last a week. 

And, lastly, you women of England are 
all now shrieking with one voice, — you 
and your clergymen together, — because 
you hear of your Bibles being attacked. If 
you choose to obey your Bibles, you will 
never care who attacks them. It is just 
because you never fulfill a single down- 
right precept of the Book, that you are so 
careful for its credit; and just because you 
don't care to obey its whole words, that 
you are so particular about the letters of 
tbem. The Bible tells you to dress plainly, 
— and you are mad for finery; the Bible 

2IO 



War. 

tells you to have pity on the poor, — and 
you crush them under your carriage- 
wheels; the Bible tells you to do judgment 
and justice, — and you do not know, nor 
care to know, so much as what the Bible 
word "justice" means. Do but learn so 
much of God's truth as that comes to; 
know what He means when He tells you 
to be just; and teach your sons, that their 
bravery is but a fool's boast, and their 
deeds but a firebrand's tossing, unless they 
are indeed Just men, and Perfect in the 
Fear of God, — and you will soon have no 
more war, unless it be indeed such as is 
willed by Him, of whom, though Prince 
of Peace, it is also written, ''In Right- 
eousness He doth judge, and make war." 

THE END. 



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